"Poetry in Motion - Balade Poetique" is a workshop centered on imagination and movement.
The workshop offers a poetic journey through carefully selected poetic, textual, and musical works, all centered around a theme related to nature and the seasons, leading to an ephemeral poetic performance.
The workshop is adapted to the pace and motor skills of each individual, welcoming all diversities and accessible to everyone.
In this experiential session, participants will explore theater arts in healing from conflict and harm. We will specifically utilize a framework of restorative justice in acknowledging the expansive possibilities for repair, reconciliation, and closure beyond punishment or the criminalization of wrongdoing. Employing tools from Drama Therapy, Playback Theater, and Theater of the Oppressed, participants will consider how conflict moves and feels, examine communication styles, center impact and needs, and define justice on our own terms. All bodies enthusiastically welcome. Conflict mediation and RJ circles are language-heavy, highly verbal spaces - here, we will try to get out of our heads and into our bodies to ‚ "unstick the stuckness" of our lives, especially the habits, activators, personalities, cultures, and internalized messages of how we deal with harm. Our reaction to conflict or victimization can emerge from self-protection and survival, and we will bring gentle awareness to where our minds take us, what we think, how we feel and process difficult things. We will enter a creative process around the issues that cause us to freeze, flare, or hide - experimenting with new choices and developing collective insights. We will dive into the art of apology, embodied storytelling, role-play/reversal, and the sculpting of personal and social narratives. Much of the content will pull from Tatiana Chaterji's curriculum on healing arts with community members impacted by the criminal-legal system, using performance, witnessing, and victim-offender dialogue to arrive at self-actualization.
"Always Have Been" is an ethnodrama co-created by Michelle Yadon and Stephen Lewis. Lewis conducted interviews with five transgender men to capture their lived experiences. Using this secondary data, Yadon and Lewis crafted an ethnodrama to convey these narratives. This staged reading marks the play's premiere, performed by members of the NADTA. We invite you to join us and immerse yourself in these compelling stories. Following the performance, there will be a talk-back session allowing audience members to reflect on the play. Yadon and Lewis will also discuss the research process and future directions of the project.
