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East Side Institute Announces Plans for “Performing the World 4” Event

New York, NY – July 20 – The New York City-based East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy announced its fourth biennial performance conference, Performing the World 4:  The Performance of Community and the Community of Performance (PTW4), which is expected to bring hundreds of presenters and attendees from dozens of countries to Tarrytown, New York, October 12 through 14. PTW4 participants will showcase the out-of-box, performance-based projects they have invented to address issues of intractable poverty, disease, and ethnic violence – often, without foundation and/or government subsidy.  

“Since its genesis in 2001, Performing the World has grown to have real significance for our participants and, more importantly, for the tens of thousands of people they work with everyday in obscure villages and urban neighborhoods across the globe,” said East Side Institute director, Lois Holzman. “We are bringing together people, who are using performance, both on-and-off the stage, to profoundly and peacefully change our world. They seek to transform themselves and their communities to creatively address the economic, social and cultural problems they face. Most believe that mainstream models of community development are not working and that traditional funding streams are too restrictive.”

Reflecting this year’s focus on community building, 35 presenters work in the area of community development. Another 41 are educators, youth workers, and therapists working with refugee children. Others include artists, social scientists, health and helping professionals, psychologists, social entrepreneurs, business professionals, and activists. Specific presenters expected to attend include:

• Kenya -- Pamela Ateka founder of the Community Focus Group working with children orphaned by AIDS.
• USA -- Jeff Smithson, a professional clown, improviser and Hospital Outreach Specialist for Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp.
• Denmark -- Volker Bunzendahl, a psychologist and educator who brings carnival, dancing, and play to “subvert” the everyday school routine in public schools throughout Denmark.
• Brazil -- Edmilton Reis, a police captain, who participates with 29 fellow officers in a dance troupe that performs in neighborhoods across the state of Bahia to help allay citizens’ fear and suspicion of police brutality and corruption.
• USA -- Laurent Ditmann, a vice principal at Decatur Georgia’s International Community School, a haven for refugee children from 45 war-torn countries.
• Australia -- John Findlay, an educator and founder of Zing, a consulting company that helps corporate and organizational clients use wireless keyboard technology to facilitate group collaboration and creativity.
• Netherlands -- Elise Griede, a drama trainer with War Child Holland, who has helped develop participatory theatre projects for children in Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Afghanistan.
• USA -- Kat Koppett, an improv performer and training director with the Mop and Bucket Improvisational Theatre Company, which helps create customized performances for businesses looking to enhance workplace creativity.
• South Africa -- Betsi Pendry, founder and director of “The Living Together Project,” an organization dedicated to helping communities cope with HIV/AIDS.
• Ethiopia -- David Schein, a community theatre organizer and founder of Awassa Children’s Project and the One Love AIDS Education Theatre, a youth theatre troupe that engages issues of sexuality and HIV/AIDS.
• Serbia -- Vera Erac and Aleksandra Jelic, psychologist and theatre director working with marginalized people including groups of prisoners, drug addicts and Roma (Gypsy)
  communities in Novi Sad.
• Canada -- Andrew Burton, a community theatre director from British Columbia, who uses interactive theatre to explore issues of drug addiction, racism, sexual exploitation, and family violence.
• South Africa -- Kennedy Chinyowa, a post-doctoral research fellow in Theatre for Development, who creates community theatre with disadvantaged youths.

Performing the World is a bi-annual, three-day international gathering. Begun in 2001, PTW is dedicated to advancing the global performance movement for human development and social change. The first three conferences (2001 and 2003 in Montauk, NY, 2005 in Tarrytown, NY) attracted a total of 1,000 participants from 35 US states and 27 countries in North and South America, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Indian subcontinent. Each participant brings what they have learned back to an average of 1,000 adults, children and families in their communities and countries, totaling more than one million people who reap the benefit of this global performance community. From their many professional locations, they engage the tough social problems of our day – poverty, violence, AIDS, illiteracy, mental illness, intolerance, and social injustice.

The East Side Institute for Group and Short Term Psychotherapy is an international training and research center recognized for its cutting edge approach to human development. The Institute was founded in 1985 in New York City by a small group of professionals and academics who believed that new methods for human development required an independent location from which to build community. The Institute and the network of organizations, institutions and individuals it works with in the US and abroad serve over 500,000 people annually and reaches thousands more through its professional workshops, seminars, conferences and training.

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FROM:                East Side Institute

Contact:              Jan Wootten / Danielle Thornton

212-941-8906

jwootten@eastsideinstitute.org