US WORLD THEATRE DAY MESSAGE 2016

U.S. World Theatre Day Message 2016 by Ping Chong

Many years ago I was at a retreat for artists and scholars in Italy. Almost every day, my collaborator and I would leave the luxurious confines of the estate to experience the town below. The scholars preferred to stay in, scribbling away in their rooms until dinner, mystified as to why we wanted to leave paradise. What they didn’t realize was that artists, and theatre artists most of all, need to engage, to connect with the world around them. 

When I scan the world around me now, the word that comes to mind is “displacement." Our century and the last have seen the displacement of peoples and cultures on an unprecedented scale and with often tragic consequences. The root causes are well known: war, racism, poverty, environmental degradation, the desire for personal freedom, the dream of a better life. My own family history includes elements of these. But this mixing of world cultures—amplified today the rapacious communications revolution—has also yielded some interesting, cultural hybrids. I have come to see my life and art as a testament to both the challenges and opportunities inherent in these often unplanned global exchanges. And I have come to believe in the power of theatre to enrich lives, heal communities and to build bridges where none existed before. 

My family is from the Cantonese opera. In the old days, Chinese opera companies would travel on “Red Boats” to bring theatre to riverfront villages. They would leave their homes and brave the occasional pirate attack in order to bring theatre to otherwise isolated communities. Later my own family expanded their touring range and came to the United States to perform for homesick Chinese immigrants. They tried to build a cultural bridge across the Pacific but were expelled by immigration laws that explicitly targeted the Chinese, much as some in the United States and Europe are now proposing that Syrians or Muslims or Mexicans should be excluded. My family went to Canada, where they struggled and where I was born. When the immigration laws were finally loosened we came back to settle in New York’s Chinatown, then a Cantonese village within the global metropolis. I have called New York home ever since. I never saw my parents perform. They gave up the theatre to open coffee shops in Chinatown, to make a better life for their family. But when the opera troupes came to town, we would go. I didn’t see a Western play until I was in high school. When I discovered the wider world of global culture, I was a sponge, an ambassador, an evangelist for cross-pollination, cultural collision and connection. These have been the recurring themes in my work, and life. 

My work has sought, always, to engage the world: in ideas, in collaborative creation, and in the shared performance experience. My aesthetic influences, beyond my family legacy and the specific American moment (the 60s) that I came of age in, include Japanese, Italian, and Hollywood film, Asian puppetry, the avant-garde—the whole world, really. For me, it is about honoring lives lived, cultural traditions and finding the most expressive form to convey the subject at hand. As the scientists tell us, all islands connect underwater. 

In my 44 years as a theatre practitioner, and no less, a curious human being, I have had the good fortune and privilege to have created and toured work throughout the world. In the East West Quartet, Blindness, andCollidescope I have sought to reckon with the history of cultural collisions that have brought us to the world we live in now. Through the Undesirable Elements series, my collaborators and I have introduced dozens of communities to their least heard members—and often shared those stories with the world beyond.

The very act of theatre-making is a fundamentally utopian act. Creating ensemble is creating community in the rehearsal room; performance is creating community in public. Artists and audiences share collective human experience, contact, curiosity, and today perhaps more urgently than ever, connection. In this time of profound discord and disconnection, of grave injustice around the world (and the resistance to same) and of economic and ecological imbalance, how do we in the theatre, we foot soldiers of conscience, help to shepherd in a new century of hope, compassion, and reconnection? By doing what we do best. By turning our investigative lens on the issues of our time, by using our art to create safe spaces to discuss and resolve conflict and by providing the saving grace of humor, empathy, and understanding in the face of all obstacles. What we do, what we can do, is more urgently needed than ever before.

Ping Chong is an internationally acclaimed artist and pioneer in the use of media in the theatre. His theatrical works bring his unique artistic vision to bear on major historical issues of our times, and focus on bringing unheard voices and under-represented stories to the stage. Encompassing puppetry, dance, documentary theater, and other experimental theater forms, his works have explored a wide variety of subjects from a hidden genocide in Africa to class struggles in America to modernization in China to the experiences of Muslim youth in post -9/11 America. Throughout, the common thread has been a unifying commitment to artistic innovation and social responsibility. Since 1972, Chong has created over 100 productions which have been presented at major festivals and theatres including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Lincoln Center Festival, La MaMa, the RomaEuropa Festival, the Singapore Festival, the Tokyo International Festival and many others. In 1992, he created the first Undesirable Elements production, a series of community-based oral history projects, working with real people to explore issues of culture and identity.The Undesirable Elements program now includes a youth programs in NY Public Schools and a training institute for artists and activists. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a USA Artist Fellowship, two BESSIE awards, two OBIE awards, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award and a 2014 National Medal of Arts.

THEATRE PERSONALITY DELIVERED THE MESSAGE OF WORLD THEATRE DAY 2016: ANATOLI VASSILIEV

Anatoli Vassiliev is an internationally acclaimed theatre director and professor of Russian Theatre. He is the founder of the Moscow Theatre School of Dramatic Arts initially located on Povarskaia road, then relocated in a new building on Sretenka road. It is an architecturally original space, conceived according to Vassiliev's plans for the purposes of theatrical research to which it is dedicated.

He has taught many times at the Lounatcharski State Conservatory of Dramatic Art (GITIS), the VGIK Moscow Institute of Cinema, and the ENSATT (École nationale supérieure des arts et techniques du théâtre) in Lyon. He is considered to be the greatest Russian director of his generation.

In 1968 Anatoli Vassiliev enrols in GITIS and studies with Andrei Popov and Maria Knebel. In 1973 he starts working in the Moscow Art Theatre where he adapts Osvald Zagradnik's A Solo for a Clock with Chimes. From 1977 onwards, he works at the Stanislavski Theatre under the leadership of Andrei Popov. He gains recognition with the stage adaptation of Maxim Gorki's The First Draught of Vassa Zheleznova, and The Grown Daughter of a Young Man, by Victor Slavkin.

In 1982 he is invited by Yuri Luybimov's Taganka Theatre. His performance Cerceau, is recognized as the best adaptation in 1985. During the 1980s he begins to teach classes for script writers and film directors.

He establishes his theatre, the Dramatic Arts School, in 1987. The theatre's first performances take place in the basement of the Povarskaia road building, north of the Arbat district in the centre of Moscow. The company's inaugural season is launched on February 24th 1987 with Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. Together with Cerceau that Viktor Slavkin wrote specifically for the company, both productions tour in Western Europe for the first time in 1987-1988
His school becomes a laboratory for experimentation on the voice and body of the actor. Anatoli Vassiliev dedicates himself in the mise-en-scene of non-theatrical texts in order to interrogate their orality and literary value.

Having been musically educated himself, Vassiliev often returns to music in his work. Having studied in depth the structures of the play through the methodology of the « etude » he is interested in the ways the inner life of an idea can be manifested through the verb. He studies the materiality of sound, the intonation, looking to put the words into movement: the sound must become flesh.

Anatoli Vassiliev gradually gains international reputation. In 1992 he stages Lermontov's Masquerade in the Comédie Française, and the next year, in Rome, Pirandello's Each in His Own Way. In 1997 his Lamentations of Jeremiah is performed in the Avignon festival and in Italy and Berlin. The performance receives Russia's national Golden Mask prize for best performance and best scenography. In 1998 he presents Pushkin’s Don Juan or the Stone Guest in the Cartoucherie.

He stages Dostoyevsky’s Uncle's Dream (1994, Budapest), Tchaikovsky’s Dama Pika (1996 Weimar), Ostrovsky's Coupables Innocents (Hungary 1998), Pushkin's Mozart and Salieri (2000), Heiner Muller's Medea Material (2001).

On May 4th 2001, his company moves to the new building of Sretenka road, built according to the plans by Vassiliev and Igor Popov, Boris Tkhor and Sergei Goussarev. The structure of the new building with its two stages (The Manege and The Globe) and its large glass windows, is considered to contribute to the atmosphere of an artistic laboratory to which its creators aspire.

In 2005 he stages Medea Material again at the Theatre des Amandiers in Nanterre. In 2006 he presents From the Voyage of Oniegin, adapted from Pushkin and Tchaikovsky at the Odeon theatre and he is invited by Avignon festival to present Mozart and Salieri and The Iliad.

In 2006, following a conflict with Moscow's administrative authorities, Vassiliev leaves his position at the School of Dramatic Arts and moves to Europe. He works in Paris, Lyon and London. Three years later he is invited by the director of the Bolshoi Theatre to stage an adaptation of Don Giovanni.

In 2010 Vassiliev launches a three year course for the training of theatre educators. The course, based in Venice, runs for two months each year and is targeted primarily to Italian professionals although it attracts also educators, actors and directors from all over the world. In 2011, at the Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw, Poland, Vassiliev launched a research seminar on acting techniques. The seminar lasted 2 years and brought together graduates of the Venice course alongside actors from various European countries.

In March 2016 Vassiliev directs Marguerite Duras' La Musica Deuxième, in the Comédie Française in Paris. He is assisted by his long-time collaborator Natalia Issaeva, translator and theatre researcher, and by Boaz Trinker, a specialist in actors' training.

MESSAGE:WORLD THEATRE DAY 2016

	World Theatre Day 2016, 27th March
	The author of the Message of World Theatre Day 2016 is the Russian stage director Anatoli Vassiliev! More information about the message author Download the Message 2016 and its translations World Theater Day Message 2016 Do we need theatre? That is the question thousands of professionals disappointed in theatre and millions of people who are tired of it are asking themselves. What do we need it for? In those years when the scene is so insignificant in comparison with the city squares and state lands, where the authentic tragedies of real life are being played. What is it to us? Gold-plated galleries and balconies in the theatre halls, velvet armchairs, dirty stage wings, well-polished actors' voices, - or vice versa, something that might look apparently different: black boxes, stained with mud and blood, with a bunch of rabid naked bodies inside. What is it able to tell us? Everything! Theatre can tell us everything. How the gods dwell in heaven, and how prisoners languish in forgotten caves underground, and how passion can elevate us, and how love can ruin, and how no-one needs a good person in this world, and how deception reigns, and how people live in apartments, while children wither in refugee camps, and how they all have to return back to the desert, and how day after day we are forced to part with our beloveds, - theatre can tell everything. The theatre has always been and it will remain forever. And now, in those last fifty or seventy years, it is particularly necessary. Because if you take a look at all the public arts, you can immediately see that only theatre is giving us - a word from mouth to mouth, a glance from eye to eye, a gesture from hand to hand, and from body to body. It does not need any intermediary to work among human beings - it constitutes the most transparent side of light, it does not belong to either south, or north, or east, or west - oh no, it is the essence of light itself, shining from all four corners of the world, immediately recognizable by any person, whether hostile or friendly towards it. And we need theatre that always remains different, we need theatre of many different kinds. Still, I think that among all possible forms and shapes of theatre its archaic forms will now prove to be mostly in demand. Theatre of ritual forms should not be artificially opposed to that of “civilized” nations. Secular culture is now being more and more emasculated, so-called "cultural information" gradually replaces and pushes out simple entities, as well as our hope of eventually meeting them one day. But I can see it clearly now: theatre is opening its doors widely. Free admission for all and everybody. To hell with gadgets and computers - just go to the theatre, occupy whole rows in the stalls and in the galleries, listen to the word and look at living images! - it is theatre in front of you, do not neglect it and do not miss a chance to participate in it - perhaps the most precious chance we share in our vain and hurried lives. We need every kind of theatre. There is only one theatre which is surely not needed by anyone - I mean a theatre of political games, a theatre of a political "mousetraps", a theatre of politicians, a futile theatre of politics. What we certainly do not need is a theatre of daily terror - whether individual or collective, what we do not need is the theatre of corpses and blood on the streets and squares, in the capitals or in the provinces, a phony theatre of clashes between religions or ethnic groups... Anatoly Vassiliev Translation: Natalia Isaeva

WORLD THEATRE DAY 2016

Professor named one of 50 leading scholars in field, receives additional honors | Penn State University

 

Professor named one of 50 leading scholars in field, receives additional honors | Penn State University

Penn State Professor named one of 50 leading scholars in the field, receives additional honors.

Canagarajah also receives "Best Book," "Best Article" awards

Suresh Canagarajah, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Applied Linguistics, English, and Asian
Studies and director of the Migration Studies Project at Penn State, has been awarded the
American Association of Applied Linguistics’ (AAAL’s) inaugural Best Book Award for his book,
"Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations" (Routledge, 2013).
Canagarajah will receive the award on April 12 during the AAAL’s annual conference in Orlando,
Florida.

This is the third noteworthy award that Canagarajah has received for "Translingual Practice;" he
also received the Mina P. Shaughnessy Award from the Modern Language Association (MLA) in
2015 and the British Association for Applied Linguistics’ 2014 Book Prize for an Outstanding
Book in Applied Linguistics.

It is also Canagarajah’s third noteworthy award in 2016. His 2015 article, “‘Blessed in My Own
Way’: Pedagogical A²ordances for Dialogical Voice Construction in Multilingual Student Writing,”
which appeared in the Journal of Second Language Writing, was recently named Best Article of
the Year for 2015 by that publication’s editorial board of directors.

More recently, Canagarajah was named one of the top 50 scholars who have shaped the ýeld of
Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) in the past 50 years by TESOL
International Association. TESOL International selected its “50 at 50,” along with its “30 Up and
Coming,” in conjunction with the organization’s 50th anniversary in 2016. Canagarajah was
among those recognized for “leadership that has helped build the association and develop
English language teaching and learning into a profession that touches the lives of students and
educators worldwide.” He and his colleagues will be recognized at a special VIP reception on
April 8 during TESOL International’s annual convention in Baltimore.

Canagarajah received his bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka;
his master’s degree in English from Bowling Green University; and his doctorate in applied
linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin. A member of the Penn State faculty since
2007, he has also held tenure-track positions at the University of Ja²na, Sri Lanka, and at Baruch
College at City University of New York. Canagarajah is a past president of AAAL and currently sits on the executive committee of the MLA’s Language and Society Division.

Lead Writer, College of the Liberal Arts

INTERNATIONAL MOTHER LANGUAGES DAY 2016

INTERNATIONAL MOTHER LANGUAGES DAY 2016

KALI PARASURAMAN: THE MAN RESISTS OPPRESSION FROM WITHIN AND OUTSIDE IN ORDER TO KEEP THE ANCIENT PRIDE OF THE TAMIL CULTURE.

AN EXPONENT IN THE ART OF PARAI MELAM AND PARAI MELA KOOTHTHU KEPT ITS DIGNITY AMID CULTURAL TSUNAMI OF THE CASTE OPPRESSION.

PARAI MELA KOOTHTHU IS A VIBRANT ART THAT KEEPS THE NERVES STRAIGHT AND MAKE THE PEOPLE DANCE IN JUBILANT.

THIRDEYE LOCAL KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS ACTIVISTS GROUP IS WORKING WITH THE STALWART OF THE ART KALI PARASURAMAN AND HIS DISCIPLE SON KIRUPAKARN AND TEAM FOR A GREAT EVENT OF PARAI MELA KOOTHTHU IN BATTICALOA.

THIS PROGRAM WILL TAKE TOUR TO DIFFERENT PLACES.

Dr.S.Jeyasankar

Birth Centenary Year of Poet Tambimuttu

Poetry London (1939–51)
Poetry London–New York (1956–60)

Poetry London/Apple Magazine, which had just two issues.

A Sri Lankan Tamil from an affluent English-speaking Roman Catholic family, M. J. Tambimuttu arrived in Britain at the age of 22. Having already published three volumes of poetry in Ceylon, he soon immersed himself in the literary world of London’s Soho and Fitzrovia. Within little more than a year of his arrival he had founded the magazine Poetry London (1939–51) with the writer and musician Anthony Dickins. While Dickins' involvement quickly diminished, Tambimuttu edited the first fourteen volumes of the magazine and a number of books, as well as writing his own poetry. 

In July 1943, with the backing of publishers Nicholson and Watson (on the recommendation of T. S. Eliot who was an admirer of his), he established Editions Poetry London, which published contemporary verse and prose, as well as art books, in hard cover. Tambimuttu was also a regular participant in the BBC radio series Talking to India during the Second World War. A man of charisma as well as a talented editor, he had an array of friends and acquaintances with whom he enjoyed the pubs and cafes of Fitzrovia.

Tambimuttu returned to Sri Lanka in 1949 then moved to New York in 1952 where he launched the magazine Poetry London–New York (1956–60) as well as continuing to publish short fiction and poetry of his own, and lecturing at the Poetry Center and New York University. In 1968 he returned to London where he founded a final magazine, Poetry London/Apple Magazine, which had just two issues, and a publishing company, the Lyrebird Press. He died of heart failure in London in 1983.

SEASONAL GREETING CARDS OF THIRD EYE

CULTURAL SOUVENIRS CREATED BY THIRD EYE LOCAL KNOWLEDGE AND SKILL ACTIVISTS GROUP

SAVANIKKAI PLAYER NALLATHAMBY VAIRAMUTHTHU OF SORUVIL, MANNAMPIDDY, EASTERN SRI LANKA

SAVANIKKAI IS AN STRING INSTRUMENT USED IN THE RITUALS OF VEDUVAR COMMUNITY AND PATHTHASI RITUALS IN EASTERN SRI LANKA.

NALLATHAMBY VAIRAMUTHTHU IS AN EXPONANT IN PLAYING OF SAVANIKKAI.

PONNUCHCHAMY SUNTHARAMOORTHY of Siththandy, Batticaloa: Maker of musical instruments of the Traditional Performances.

Creative work from local handlloom materials by Kamala Vasuki

Creative works on local handlloom materials by Nirmalavasan

Painter A.Mark is remembered in Jaffna!!! A.Mark in the creative hands of veteran artists Asai Rasaiah

On Resisting GMOs: "Saving Seeds Is a Political Act"

On Resisting GMOs: "Saving Seeds Is a Political Act"

By Vandana Shiva and Sarah van Gelder

Source: Yes Magazine
November 17, 2013

Trained in physics and philosophy, Vandana Shiva is renowned for her activism against GMOs,
globalization, and patents on seeds and traditional foods. She co-founded Navdanya, which
promotes seed saving and organic farming and has more than 70,000 farmer-members.

Sarah van Gelder: The seed has been a major part of your work. Could you
say a little about what a seed is at its essence?

Vandana Shiva: The seed in its essence is all of the past evolution of the Earth,
the evolution of human history, and the potential for future evolution. The
seed is the embodiment of culture because culture shaped the seed with careful selection—women
picked the best, diversified. So from one grass you get 200,000 rices.
That is a convergence of human intelligence and nature’s intelligence. It is the ultimate expression
of life, and in our language, it means “that from which life arises on its own, forever and ever and
ever.”

van Gelder: So what is it worth?

Shiva: It’s priceless. There is no price to seed, which is why the commodification of seed is such an
outrage. Every culture that I’ve come across believes that destroying seed is the ultimate sin.
Communities have starved to death rather than eat the seed grain.

van Gelder: The prevailing worldview separates humans from the natural world, and it has had
terrible effects. How are people healing this separation, and how are seeds part of that work?

Shiva: No matter what problem you look at, every ecological problem comes from this illusion that
we are separate from nature.
I believe overcoming the separation is a longing much deeper than the
recent rise of ecological awareness. The healing is coming from reclaiming
our oneness with the web of life, with the universe itself.

Some people do it through meditation and yoga, but a lot more are doing
it by just planting a seed and growing a garden. In planting a seed you are one
with the cycles and regenerative capacity of life. We hear the same thing again
and again from children we work with sowing gardens of hope with seeds of
freedom. When you ask, “So what did you learn?” they always talk about the
miracle of life—that a tiny seed bursts into a plant and gives an abundance,
and they can harvest a seed from it.

A seed sown in the soil makes us one with the Earth. It makes us realize that we are the Earth. That
this body of ours is the panchabhuta—the five elements that make the universe and make our
bodies. The simple act of sowing a seed, saving a seed, planting a seed, harvesting a crop for a
seed is bringing back this memory—this timeless memory of our oneness with the Earth and the
creative universe.

There’s nothing that gives me deeper joy than the work of protecting the diversity and the freedom
of the seed. Every expression of diversity is an expression of freedom, and every expression of
monoculture is an expression of coercion.

van Gelder: Can you say more about that? What is the relationship of freedom
to biodiversity?

Shiva: Life is self-organized. Self-organized systems evolve in diversity. You
are not identical to me, because each of us has evolved in freedom. The self-organizing capacity
of life is expressed in diversity. Diversity of culture, diversity of humans, diversity of seeds.
Uniformity is constructed from the outside. It is coercive. So a farm of only Roundup Ready soya is
actually a battlefield. Chemical warfare is going on—spraying of Roundup to kill everything green,
to kill the soil organisms, to kill the diversity, but also to kill the potential of the crop to manage itself
and diseases. Monocultures can only be held together through external control, and
uniformity and external control and concentration go hand in hand.

van Gelder: How do we, the people, get strong enough to counter the enormous
power of Monsanto and the like?

Shiva: We are dealing with life itself, so the first place we get power is by
aligning ourselves with the forces of life. That is why the act of seed saving
is such an important political act in this time. And that is the part that is
linked to self-organizing—organizing yourself to save the seeds, have a community garden, create
an exchange, do everything that it takes to protect and rejuvenate the seed. But at this point,
industry is hungry to have absolute control. They will not tolerate a single farmer who has
 freedom in his seed supply. They will not stand a single seed that grows on its own terms.

van Gelder: If anything, things have gotten more dire since the last time we
talked. How do you get energized and keep your own spirits up?

Shiva: You know it is true that on the one hand, the concentration of power is
more than ever before. But I think the awareness about the illegitimacy of this
power is also more than ever before. If you take into account the number of
movements, the number of protests taking place, and the number of people building alternatives,
it’s huge.

The first place where I get joy as well as the energy to continue is the positive
work of seed saving, promoting a peaceful agriculture, working with farmers, and now increasingly
working with non-farmers. In the course we are running on the farm right now, we have 55 young
people—someone from a banking system, someone from a software firm, three filmmakers.

No matter where in the world you are, people are realizing food is important. They are realizing food
begins with seed, and everyone wants to learn. When I see those processes get unleashed, when I
see how rapidly gardening has become such an important way of healing violence—I just met a
young man who’s working with ex-convicts to spread gardens. That’s his work! He’s created a firm,
and they are the owners, and the board members—how can you not be charged with energy?

Sarah van Gelder interviewed Vandana Shiva for How To Eat Like Our Lives Depend On It, the
Winter 2014 issue of YES! Magazine. Sarah is executive editor of YES!

Recent works of S.P. Puspakanth of Batticaloa, Sri Lanka!

S.P. Puspakanth is a talented youngster of Batticaloa and a student of  Dr.T.Sanathan, University of Jaffna.