Conversations
All events take place at Culture Project, 55 Mercer Street, unless otherwise noted.
JULY 13 at 1 PM: viBe Theater Experience - Girls Life Adventure
Girls Life Adventure (GLA) is a FREE workshop for urban teenage girls created by viBe Theater Experience and Girls Write Now. During this 4-hour "quest," girls explore issues of social justice and performance and writing to find creative ways to challenge injustices in their lives and communities.
GLA is open to teenage girls. For more information, email info@viBeTheater.org.
JULY 14 at 7 PM: Samantha Power: The Role of the Individual in Social Movements
Samantha Power (2003 Pulitzer Prize for A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide), Elizabeth Rubin, and Lekha Singh discuss the power of the individual in making real change in the world.
In the world we live in today, defined as it is by the ideas of war and terror, what role can human rights and imagination play? How far can we attribute our political and social failings to our failures of imagination?
Power & Nafisi discuss these questions with specific reference to women's rights, individual rights, and what goes on in the name of "culture."
PLEASE NOTE: due to sudden illness, Azar Nafisi will not be able to join us
on Saturday July 14.
SAMANTHA POWER will be joined onstage by New York Times Magazine
Contributing Writer ELIZABETH RUBIN, and photographer & activist (and new
Culture Project Board member) LEKHA SINGH.
JULY 16 at 7 PM: People Power vs. the Right's Advance: The Case of South Dakota
Laura Flanders (Air America) leads a discussion of one of the most noteworthy victories of 2006.
Against overwhelming odds, South Dakotans reversed a no-exceptions abortion ban via ballot inititative. How did they do it? How did regional and national allies help? With more threats looming at the local and federal level, people who care about reproductive justice need to attend this unique event. The panelists:
* Charon Asetoyer, Founder and Executive Director of the Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center in South Dakota.
* Sondra Goldschein, state strategies attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union's Reproductive Freedom Project.
* Nancy Goldstein, Director of Communications & Development for National Advocates for Pregnant Women.
* Laura Ross, founder of Women Run! South Dakota, a state-based PAC that helped 23 pro-choice Democratic women (including Asetoyer) run for office in '06.
* Cari Sietstra, founder and former executive director of Law Students for Choice.
Laura Flanders is the host of RadioNation on Air America Radio and the author of Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians. Books will be available for signing at the event.
For more on this issue, please visit National Advocates for Pregnant Women and the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.
Previous Women Center Stage Conversations
June 25 at 7:30 PM: Opening Night - Why Women Center Stage?
Why Women Center Stage? - A conversation between and about women making serious change in the world, on a variety of platforms. Jennifer Buffett, President of the Novo Foundation, will moderate a panel of extraordinary women including Gloria Feldt (activist, former director of Planned Parenthood), Aisha al-Adawiya (Women In Islam), Idelisse Malave (Tides Foundation), Letty Cottin Pogrebin (activist and author), and Carol Jenkins (Women's Media Center. We will look at the specific work of women in arenas from environmental justice to dance, politics to painting, religion to law. We will hear from women about their work, and explore with them the particular experience and expertise of women making social change.
June 27 at 7 PM: Beauty on the Vine: The Beyond Beauty Initiative
From mixed-race identities to extreme plastic surgery, Beauty On The Vine is a modern fable exploring the power of the human face, fundamentalism and parenting. Fresh from Epic Theater Center's successful premier run of the play, Olivia Wilde leads a reading that will serve as a catalyst for a conversation about beauty, young women and navigating a world where power and beauty are increasingly blurry and loaded.
June 28 at 6:30 PM: The Gathering: Young People and Criminal Justice
When our children are being arrested in school for the “crime” of misbehaving, there is a clear failure not only in our school systems but in our justice system. Harry Belafonte’s The Gathering creates an intergenerational, interracial space to allow the justice community, in its broadest sense, to get to know one another and to find the common agenda to support one another as we continue our work.
Gatherings bring together young organizers and civil rights and peace activists of all races and creates a safe space to highlight the work being done in all communities and to discuss the overlap. Project Director Malia Lazu leads a panel of criminal justice activists, youth organizers, and young performers to discuss the problems and the work of solving them.
JULY 2 at 7 PM: Young People 4: Young Women in the Political Arena
YP4, the youth arm of People for the American Way (www.pfaw.org), hosts a panel of young women working in American politics – holding elected office, working on campaigns, doing campus organizing, and more. They will discuss their experiences, their visions for the future of political America, and how their presence is impacting the political landscape.
JULY 9 at 7 PM: Carol Gilligan & Gabrielle Roth: On Joy & Pleasure
Writer and psychologist Carol Gilligan (The Birth of Pleasure) and movement and theater director Gabrielle Roth come together for an interactive and creative exploration of joy and pleasure. Combining their backgrounds in dance, theater, rhythm, and the shamanic, Roth and Gilligan lead a conversation that seduces us back into our bodies, explores the integration of mind, body, and heart, and stands on the line where the personal becomes political.
July 11 at 12 PM - CODEPINK: Women Acting Up to End the War –
"Direct Action, Street Theater, & Bird-Dogging" Lunchtime Workshop and Discussion
The women-initiated peace and social justice movement CODEPINK: Women for Peace uses direct action, banner drops, inside/outside strategies, and street theater to get a loud and vibrant anti-war message onto the streets, into the halls of Congress, and into the mainstream media. Dana Balicki, CODEPINK's media director, and Nancy Kricorian, CODEPINK'S New York City coordinator and supervisor of the Bird-dog Hillary Campaign, will talk about their ongoing work to end the occupation of Iraq.
Bag lunches are welcome. Admission is free but reservations are a must!
Please reserve your spot by emailing boxoffice@cultureproject.org