Six theatre companies in a theatre housed within a deconsecrated church in Brooklyn, New York. An audience of professionals, curious people and artists.
The Caravan Next conference in New York was an opportunity to present the European project that is coming to an end, and share best practices of social theatre and community theatre with some American theatre companies, chosen to cover the various areas of social theatre to illustrate its various facets:
1. SCT Centre – Italy
2. Bond Street Theatre – New York, engaged theatre, committed for years to working in emergency and development cooperation contexts. It chose to present two of its main projects: one in Afghanistan, where theatre is considered illegal and forbidden to women, and one in Myanmar and Malaysia conducted with refugees.
3. Irondale Theatre – New York, avant-garde theatre that became famous for its project with the New York Police Department: citizens and police officers participate in a social theatre workshop and build a performance together, exchanging roles, analyzing their positions and preconceptions, working on the concept of violence and community.
4. Theatre of the Oppressed – New York, theatre that takes up Boal’s method and Paolo Freire’s ideas and works in the metropolis with homeless people, prisoners, young dropouts and the LGBT community to restore dignity to everyone in their diversity.
5. Ping Chong – New York, research theatre that has started a project with the Muslim community of New York, and with Muslim women in particular, which sees it as the protagonist.
6. Touchstone Theatre – Pennsylvania, theatre active in Bethlehem since 1981 that has created numerous community theatre projects involving teenagers, workers and elderly people from the city and that signs a new production every year.
