Past Projects

A Virtual Performance Event Presented by the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, Georgetown University’s Theater and Performance Studies Program and Sojourn Theatre

As we hurtle toward what many are calling the most important election in living memory, The Lab is thrilled to be partnering with Sojourn Theatre and renowned civic-theatre practitioner and Lab Think Tank Member/ Artistic Associate Michael Rohd on this participatory theatrical event that explores critical questions about leadership and democracy through the voices of a diverse chorus of participating citizen-artists. … MORE

This special program of performance and discussion combines scenes performed by leading professional actors from Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning two-part epic play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes with insights from experts in the medical, political, and artist communities on the legacy and continued resonance of the play’s portrayal of the AIDS epidemic in the context of the current moment. … MORE

Verge is a new student arts and politics festival, created through the first cohort of student lab fellows for other creative and engaged youth across the globe. This festival brought together students interested in the intersection of politics and the arts, featuring discussions on specific topics in the field, live performances and films from our student fellows, … MORE

Presented as part of 

As part of the inaugural CrossCurrents festival, The Lab presented The Gathering, which brought together more than 200 visionary artists from more than 40 countries to celebrate and highlight how their innovative work harnesses the power of performance to address the pressing challenges of our world. … MORE

As a part of The Gathering and alongside performances of The Chibok Girls: Our Story by Renegade Theatre, The Lab presented a suite of performances from around the world open with limited availability to the public.

Thursday, May 9th
6:15pm
MOVING STORIES
Documentary film Screening
Including Discussion with Battery Dance Company founder Jonathan Hollander

For 40 years, … MORE

Presented as part of 

New York’s Phantom Limb Company, known for its marionette puppetry and multimedia theatrical production, has created this haunting response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in collaboration with butoh dance master Dai Matsuoka. Falling Out is the company’s final installment in an environmental trilogy exploring our changing relationship to nature over time. … MORE

Presented as part of 

The Chibok Girls: Our Story, the US Premiere of Renegade Theatre’s searing work of testimonial theater about the abduction of 276 girls from their school in the Nigerian town of Chibok by the Boko Haram in 2014, … MORE

In 2016, Tania El Khoury commissioned musician and street artist Basel Zaraa, who was born a refugee in Syria, to record a rap song inspired by the journey his sisters made from Damascus to Sweden. As Far As My Fingertips Take Me, the intimate theater-for-one experience that El Khoury designed around Zaraa’s music, … MORE

Groundbreaking at the time, the 1959 Broadway play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry showcased to a wider public the struggles of a poor African-American family in the United States. Prominent high profile productions took place in 2016 in Sweden, directed by Josette Bushell-Mingo, OBE, and at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, … MORE

In a public square, the audience, wearing headphones, moves through the space answering simple questions with wordless gestures. As the performance evolves, Dominio Público becomes at once a three-dimensional mapping of societal structures and an embodied exploration of individual agency and collective power.

Seen and celebrated over the past decade in Barcelona, … MORE

Abibigromma, the resident troupe of the National Theatre of Ghana, was in residence in Washington, DC for three days only for an outdoor marketplace production of Ten Blocks on the Camino Real by Tennessee Williams.

Written by American playwright Williams in 1947, Ten Blocks related in songs, dialogue, and dance how the American hero Kilroy maintains his open heart in a grasping world, … MORE

An essential component of The Lab is bringing people together in community and conversation. Through our symposiums we have sought to raise pertinent topics and discuss them with artists, politicians, and educators in these areas. … MORE

The Lab has brought artists to Georgetown University over the past years to share their art, interact with students, and engage in dialogue surrounding performance and politics. … MORE

Over the last 10 years, The Lab has contributed to a number of Festivals in partner with other organizations. Read more about our inter-organizational work and participation below. … MORE

In this re-imagining of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, award-winning Iraqi-American playwright, performer, and Think Tank member Heather Raffo (9 Parts of Desire) examines the iconic play from a Middle Eastern perspective, engaging the stories and experiences of Arab American women. Raffo’s contemporary characters, a family of immigrants, grapple with past and present shames as they try to reconcile their relationship to their identity and to each other. … MORE

Beyond Sacred, written by Lab Think Tank member Ping Chong and Sara Zatz, with Ryan Conarro in collaboration with the performers, is an interview-based theatre production exploring the diverse experiences of Muslim communities within New York City. The five diverse cast members share the common experience of coming of age in a post-9/11 NYC at a time of increasing Islamophobia. … MORE

Portals enable individuals to come face-to-face with participants – full body – in a partner city across the world, conversing live as if in the same room. Created by the artist Amar C. Bakshi and his collective Shared Studios, Portals are gold shipping containers with immersive audio and video technology through which individuals in Washington, … MORE

Generation (Wh)Y was an intimate live performance that moved through multiple spaces exploring real experiences from global voices and the poetry of everyday life. This immersive theatrical experience of innovative multi-media performances resulted from year-long dialogue and encounters between Georgetown students and youth from Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Qatar, … MORE

Written and directed by one of Pakistan’s most celebrated artists, this hilarious send-up of US-Pakistani relations set in the Visa Office at the US Embassy in Islamabad explodes stereotypes through satire. This fully-staged production featured the work of 10 Pakistani artists from Ajoka Theatre as well as Georgetown students and professional guest artists from the DC area and beyond. … MORE

The Lab was scheduled to host this internationally celebrated production of Syria: The Trojan Women, performed by an extraordinary group of women refugees forced to flee their homes in Syria, and weaving their personal testimonies around Euripides’ classic text.

Despite many months of constant efforts and extraordinary advocacy on the women’s behalf from a wide range of top officials, … MORE

Laterna Magika’s classic and typical use of film footage is replaced in Anticodes by projection and sounds from live sources. The production introduced real-time tracking to Laterna Magika, which detects people or objects in pre-determined zones and turns the stage into a real-time visual and aural reflection of the movement of dancers on the stage. … MORE

This classic South African apartheid-era drama, inspired by a true story, is set in a prison and revolves around a cellmate who is soon to be released, and another who is serving a life sentence. The two spend their days at mind-numbing physical labor while at night rehearsing for a performance of Sophocles’ Antigone. … MORE