Date(s)
-

This event has passed

Caridad Svich: Theatre, Hope and Resistance

The meeting hall is always the theatre, but not in a figurative sense.

When we come to the theatre and gather, we are in a meeting hall, a place and space of encounter – a space that contains histories, maybe ones that are in disrepair. In theatre, we are in a larger hall of citizenry where we witness the old bricks and look at what’s been left and what can be rebuilt again. A space of hope in the Solnit sense. At any moment, something may go wrong. Will we catch each other?  Will we notice? How aware/awake are we?  We are here.  We are not somewhere else. If we are here for each other, then we are responsible for each other and the earth and the air and all else. Citizenship and responsibility. This space of writing for live performance is a space of tensions and fissures and tectonic plates shifting across fields of time. Reach for the stars, but stay close to the dirt. This is the charge of making theatre. Smell the smoke of language pouring from the mouths of the wild children who play out their salvaged stories one more time. Awake to dreaming anew. Alight the pen. Weigh your words against the spectacle and tyranny of power. Choose freedom. At all costs.

Caridad Svich received the 2012 OBIE for Lifetime Achievement and the 2011 ATCA Primus Prize for The House of the Spirits, based on Isabel Allende’s novel. Her works are published by Intellect, TCG, Manchester University Press, and more. She is co-author of Playwrights on Their Craft (Methuen, fall 2017).
 

Booking

Book your free ticket

Venue

Boardroom

Academic Visitors

Share this page