Past Projects

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

Among the key features of the Lab Fellows program is an annual in-person convening during which The Lab brings together the ten exceptionally promising Lab Fellows for a week-long artistic and cultural exchange. Building our monthly digital meetings, the summer residency offers an intensive, in-person opportunity to model the intersection and interplay of culture and politics that lies at the heart of The Lab’s work, … 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

The Lab and Shakespeare Theatre Company presented a symposium that explored how the creation and sharing of art is inherently political. Drawing inspiration from STC’s Feb. 2018 programming, this symposium examined Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Heather Raffo’s Noura, and placed them in the framework of contemporary global theater. … MORE

“What is it that makes someone so scared of a man with a pen? The reason is truth. Art has to do with revealing the truth.”

-Azar Nafisi, Author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

In October of 2017, The Lab presented Burning to Tell You to a packed house at the National Press Club, … MORE

In October of 2017, The Lab participated in Digital Eye @BlindWhino, an exciting, interactive event merging theater, film and a live game show that explored how the Digital Age is affecting our everyday lives. As technology moves towards a more intimate experience with its users, we find our private lives becoming the commodity for a global market of data-miners, … 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

The Lab’s significant global reach is manifest through its leadership role within the International Theater Institute (ITI) and through the creation of the UNESCO/ITI Network for Higher Education in the Performing Arts, co-founded by Lab co-director Derek Goldman.

July of 2017 marked a historic occasion in the history of ITI as the Network presented the inaugural Student Festival in Segovia, … MORE

Building on the success of the 2016 Global Pre-Conference in Washington DC, Finding Home; Migration, Exile and Belonging, the Global Theater Initiative (the Lab’s partnership with Theatre Communications Group) hosted the 2017 Global Pre-Conference entitled Beyond the Four Walls, a meeting ground for artists and theatre leaders to embrace theatre’s function as a space of solidarity that extends beyond physical, … MORE

In March of 2017 The Lab launched the Lab Fellows program. Funded in part by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this 18-month virtual global residency program brings together exceptionally promising professionals (performers, producers, directors, writers, scholars, activists) from around the world who are working at the intersection of performance and politics, including practitioners of international affairs and performance. … 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

Artists, activists, policymakers, and thought leaders came together for an interdisciplinary symposium exploring the theatricality of global politics. Taking place during closing weekend of the Woolly Mammoth production of internationally celebrated Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderón’s play Kiss, this free event explored the relationship between theater, political activism, and global politics through an in-depth panel discussion, … MORE

Hailed as the Jon Stewart of the Arab world, Bassem Youssef has become an icon of free speech in the Middle East. A medical doctor who was politicized during the Egyptian Revolution, Youssef developed a political satire show (Al Bernameg) that became the most popular television show across the region. … MORE

The discussion “Honoring the Legacy of Anne Frank in the 21st Century” was presented as part of the opening night of Olney Theatre Center’s The Diary of Anne Frank by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, adapted by Wendy Kesselman, and directed by Derek Goldman. Discussants Ambassador Cynthia Schneider (US Ambassador to the Netherlands 1998-2001) and director Derek Goldman each brought a unique perspective to the ongoing importance of Anne Frank’s story for understanding a variety of current international challenges, … MORE

Global Theater Initiative (GTI), a partnership between The Lab and Theatre Communications Group (TCG), hosted a Global Pre-Conference as part of TCG’s National Conference. The Global Pre-Conference embodied our collective pursuit of a highly participatory, inclusive nation without borders that includes and celebrates all theatre citizens. The theme for the Pre-Conference was Finding Home: Migration, … MORE

The Lab hosted two post-show discussions following Round House Theatre’s production of The Who and the What by Ayad Akhtar, using the play as a springboard to talk about its themes in a broader socio-political context. Panelists included Malika Bilal (international broadcaster), Lab Think Tank member Raza Rumi (writer, … MORE

The Lab hosted a post-show discussion following Theater J’s Falling Out of Time by David Grossman, featuring adaptor and director Derek Goldman and Think Tank member Cynthia Cohen (Ph.D., Director of the Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts, Brandeis University), moderated by Lab Managing Director Jojo Ruf. … 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

Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey recounts the story of one religious man’s quest to determine why God allows disasters to occur. In 1714 in Lima, Peru, Brother Juniper, a Franciscan monk, witnesses the collapse of a bridge woven by the Incas that has stood for over a century, … MORE

Lab Think Tank member Ali Mahdi Nouri was in residence with The Lab for one week, leading workshops and visiting classes on campus. The Founding Artistic Director of Al-Buggaa Theatre based in Khartoum, Sudan, Ali Mahdi is remarkable artist and visionary thinker, who does groundbreaking humanitarian theater work with child soldiers, war orphans, … 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

In immediate response to the the attack at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, The Lab hosted this forum, presented in association with the US Premiere of Amrika Chalo (Destination: U.S.A.) by Shahid Nadeem.

Ajoka Theatre has been the target of violent threats, and Pakistani authorities have banned Nadeem’s Burqavaganza for the play’s criticism of a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. … 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

This global symposium, tied to an international festival at the Goethe-Institut Washington, alternated between planned audience integrative experiments and reflective response sessions. Visiting experts from Austria, Switzerland, Germany as well as Think Tank member Michael Rohd (Sojourn Theater) and local theater artists from dog & pony dc, gave presentations which encouraged audience participation and highlighted their aesthetics, … MORE

The Lab partnered on the Kennedy Center’s World Stages Festival, organizing and participating in several panel discussions including hosting a major global panel discussion which included Nabeel al-Raee (Freedom Theater, Jenin, Palestine); Shahid Nadeem (Ajoka Theatre, Pakistan), Think Tank member Joanna Sherman (Bond Street Theater, New York, speaking about their work in Afghanistan), … 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

Documentary theater possesses a unique ability to respond to issues of pressing political import and social justice, and provides a platform and voice for the dispossessed. This symposium and festival brought together leading playwrights, artists, and governmental, political, and cultural experts from the United States and German-speaking countries to discuss, perform, and celebrate the international power and vitality of this art form. … MORE

Celebrated playwright and actress Anna Deavere Smith and acclaimed cellist Joshua Roman participated in a residency with The Lab centered around the continued development of the work On Grace. … MORE

The Lab hosted an invited convening, supported by the Georgetown University Reflective Engagement in the Public Interest Grant, featured more than 75 theater artists, policymakers, government officials, activists, cultural leaders, educators, and scholars from across the country and around the world, as well as Georgetown University faculty, students, and alums. Led by Derek Goldman and Cynthia Schneider, … MORE

Coinciding with the Convening on Global Performance, Civic Engagement, and Cultural Diplomacy, faculty and students from the University of Baghdad participated in a historic residency at The Lab, and presented a new Iraqi Arabic adaptation of 9 Parts of Desire by Lab Think Tank member Heather Raffo.

A portrait of the extraordinary (and ordinary) lives of a whole cross-section of Iraqi women: a sexy painter, … MORE