Peacebuilding, Conflict Transformation, and Conflict Zones

Asif Majid introduces the Transatlantic Muslim Voices series with an essay that traces histories of oral performance and migration away from oppression that continue to inform experiences of Muslimness in today’s world and theatre landscape.

In the final installment of this two-part conversation, artists from the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, Palestine and Al Límite Collective in New York City come together to discuss the performance of Youth Against Invasion in the Cultural Resistance March, the Freedom Theatre’s global impact, and hopes for the future of the Freedom Theatre.

In the first installment of this two-part conversation, artists from The Freedom Theatre in Jenin, Palestine and Al Límite Collective in New York City come together to discuss the work of The Freedom Theatre and its school and the creation of Youth Against Invasion.

Beto O’Byrne discusses the work of three theatre artists in New York whose acts of cultural resistance contribute to the movement for a free Palestine.

After Russian courts found that Svetlana Petriychuk’s documentary theatre piece Finist the Brave Falcon “justified terrorism” due to its feminist aims, Petriychuk and director Zhenya Berkovich were jailed. Viktor Vilisov discusses the production, clarifying the production’s aims to amplify the experiences of Russian women whose attempts to flea Russian patriarchy has landed them in oppressive marriages to Syrian ISIS fighters.

Lisa Rafferty sits down with Ukrainian documentary storyteller Alem Kent to discuss Kent’s Our Response Ability and upcoming work with ProEnglish Theatre. Through documentary and verbatim theatre practices, these productions detail experiences of Ukrainians living under siege and working as war persists around them.

Director Vitaly Kogut is one of many displaced Russian men spending this winter in Batumi, Georgia. Daniel Mesta interviews him about his work, in which uses theatre to communicate the complexities of the Russian soul while enduring censorship and cancellation.

Yaşam Özlem Gülseven interviews Mikheil Charkviani about his work on Exodus, a production that traded grand historical narratives for granular perspectives on the impact of war in Georgia. Their interview, like the production, hinges on an important question: how do we learn to live with the past?

Slovo. Theater Group uses theatre as a tool to fight against cultural oppression by promoting Ukrainian culture abroad. Audrey Rose, the group’s producer, discusses the process of making theatre during active war as a way of resisting oppression and violence.

Theatremaker Viktor Vilisov examines the important role theatre can play in supporting migrants and refugees.

In part two of his essay, Russian theatremaker Viktor Vilisov delves deeper into the performative nature of war itself and how art can create spaces for collective remembrance and grief.

Russian theatremaker Viktor Vilisov analyzes the power performance protest holds in opposing war, oppressive governments, and state violence.

In 2021, Nigerian director Josephine Awele Odunze directed a powerful production of Wedlock of the Gods by Zulu Sofola. Odunze sits down with Eseovwe Emakunu to discuss the play’s connections to issues Nigerian women face today, as well as her hopes that theatre can contribute to attaining true gender parity in Nigeria.