The Gathering 2022

The Gathering 2022

 

The Lab would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to our community, sponsors, volunteers, participants and audience 

for the incredible support and successful The Gathering.

In May 2019, The Lab inaugurated our signature event The Gathering as part of our city-wide, international CrossCurrents Festival. Over 400 visionary artists from over 40 countries came together to share performances and ideas addressing critical global issues. 

 This year’s edition of The Gathering  offered our Georgetown University community FREE access to diverse programming centered around the contributions of our Global Lab Fellows including productions, readings, discussions and workshops focusing on climate change, immigration and indigeneity, with comprehensive live-streaming for all of our community.

 

2022 Schedule & Highlights


 Welcome / Invocation

Location: Gonda Theatre

Connection + Celebration Event

 

 

Hopeful Encounters

Location Gonda Theatre, Devine, Room 035

Connection + Celebration Event

 

 

How We Go Missing

 

Location: Gonda Theatre

Performance




Andares

Location: Gonda Theatre

Performance

Ali Mahdi - The Gathering

WELCOME/INVOCATION  

 Location: Gonda Theatre 
The Lab team welcomes all participants to this 4 day intensive with ritual and rhythm. We honor each other and the space with acts of invocation, collectivity, and care.

Welcome – Derek Goldman, Artistic & Executive Director, Co-Founder, The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics

Emma Crane Jaster,  Resident Movement Artist, Global Fellows Program Manager, Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, Prassanam/Presence

Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner (Payómkawichum/Kúupangaxwichem) Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University. First-generation descendant of the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians, specializing in Indigenous philosophy, knowledge and languages

Amb. Cynthia Schneider, co-Founding Director, The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics

Azar Nafisi, best-selling author (Read Dangerously, Reading Lolita in Tehran); Centennial Fellow, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

James Thompson, Professor of Applied and Social Theatre; Founder, In Place of War; The Aesthetics of Care. “Care Is Where It’s At” 

Ali Mahdi Nouri, UNESCO Ambassador & Secretary General ITI, International Theater Institute & Albuggaa Theatre Company

Ersian Francois, General Manager and Associate Producer, Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics

Manuel Viveros, Actor, Director; Inaugural Lab Fellow, musician with Chonta’s Sound & Others

Hopeful Encounters event image

HOPEFUL ENCOUNTERS

Location: Gonda Theatre, Devine, Room 035   

Gather in small groups led by representatives from the Global Lab Fellows. Share your hopes. Meet new people. Welcome to The Gathering

"How We Go Missing" Project image

HOW WE GO MISSING

Location: Gonda Theatre

This work explores the ways Native American people have, and continue, to “go missing.”

From The Anishinaabe Theater Exchange and Anita Gonzalez, co-founder of the Racial Justice Institute at Georgetown University.

This work explores the ways Native American people have, and continue, to “go missing” both physically and through lack of representation in the United States. How We Go Missing is comprised of two works, one solo performance, and one ensemble performance. In the one-woman show, we follow Lucy (an incarcerated Native American woman on death row) as she seeks connection in her final moments. With a lot to get off of her chest in a short amount of time, she discusses topics from love to her identity. Boxed in by beliefs, society, and the self. Do we make these boxes, or do the boxes make us? The ensemble work, done via the Indigenous dramaturgical practice of story weaving, plays off these same themes. This piece examines the erasure of Native peoples and explores the stories of missing and murdered Indigenous relatives and the impact on those left behind

Recommended as a double bill with Andares. There will be a discussion with artists from both projects following Andares.

Stage image of Andares from The Gathering 2022

ANDARES

Location: Gonda Theatre
Andares interweaves lives and stories of three characters of indigenous origins: Mayan, Muxe and Wixarika.

Woven from ancestral myths, personal anecdotes, and traditional music, Andares brings together the lives and stories of three characters of indigenous origins: Mayan, Muxe and Wixarika. The play shines a light on a range of realities faced by indigenous peoples in Mexico – land usurpation, widespread violence, community resistance – all at the crossroads of old and new ways of life. Meaning “pathways,” Andares is a sincere, revelatory, and intimate close-up on some of Mexico’s most remote corners and the astonishing stories of its extraordinary people. Conceived by Héctor Flores Komatsu after a year-long search in Mexico, Andares is both a deeply touching and fierce denunciation against a present that seems intent upon destroying what was once held as sacred.

Recommended as a double bill with How We Go Missing. There will be a discussion with artists from both projects following Andares.

Post-Show Conversation (How We Go Missing + Andares)

Location: Gonda Theatre

Anita Gonzalez, director of How We Go Missing and co-founder of Georgetown’s Racial Justice Institute and Héctor Flores Komatsu, director of Andares and Global Fellow ‘20-22 are joined by artists from both productions to discuss their work and the intersections therein.

 

 

 

Verbatim Bodies Workshop

 

Location: Devine Studio Theatre

Workshop

 

 

Pani Puri Workshop

Location: Gonda Theatre

Workshop

 

 

The Land Acknowledgement that Isn’t a Land Acknowledgement: Workshop

Location: Davis Center, Room 035

Workshop

 

 

 

Disposable

 

Location: Gonda Theatre

Performance

 

 

 

Incarceration, Innocence & Justice: Zandezi

Location: Gonda Theatre

Performance

Lab Shares: Tabletop Conversations on Notable Projects

 

Location: Harbin Tent

Connection + Celebration Event

 

 

 

Drowning in Cairo

Location: Gonda Theatre

Performance

 

 

 

Post-Show Conversation

Location: Gonda Theatre

Connection + Celebration Event

Verbatim Bodies Workshop image

VERBATIM BODIES WORKSHOP, Devine Studio Theatre

From Lab Global Fellow Trà Bich Nguyen

Would you like to create your own artwork that lies between theater and performance art? Would you like to see how a “character” emerges from your own body and not from a script? Would you like to practice a few techniques in theater-making, and then experiment them with others? This workshop is for you! Theater maker Tra Nguyen will share her working hypothesis “Verbatim Bodies”, and lead a hands-on (also feet-on) session on creating performance using this method. Towards the end of the workshop, everyone will have created, participated in, or observed an original theater/performance work!

Pani Puri Workshop image

PANI PURI WORKSHOP, Gonda Theatre

From Aleya Kassam, Eric Wainaina, Rushab Nandha, Sheba Hirst, Henry Wamai, and Mshai Mwangola with support from the Nairobi Musical Theatre Initiative

 

Developed as part of the first cohort of musicals as part of the Nairobi Musical Theatre Initiative, Pani Puri is a musical in progress, that discusses interracial marriage in Kenya. In a wedding gone wrong, a brown-black love story illuminates the trials and tribulations of staying together across cultures, with music that invites us into Asian-Kenyan and African-Kenyan sounds. With support from the Lab, the writer-collaborators, along with Lab Fellow Karishma Bhagani, hosted a 29-hour workshop reading in Kenya, with Kenyan actors and musicians. Join Karishma Bhagani, together with Aleya Kassam, Eric Wainaina and Rushab Nandha in conversation about the casting, writing and rehearsal process. This presentation will also include a special documentary of footage from behind the scenes as well as snippets of the reading.



Indigenous Land Workshop image

THE LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT THAT ISN’T A LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: WORKSHOP, Davis Center, Room 035

Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner (Payómkawichum/Kúupangaxwichem), Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University. First-generation descendant of the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians, specializing in Indigenous philosophy, knowledge and languages.

In this workshop, the audience will participate in a land acknowledgment process mediated by Indigenous research methods. The process will include reflection on transformative and restorative models of justice and collaborative relationship-building. The audience’s anonymous contributions to the process will be shared publicly.

Main image for Disposable from The Gathering 2022

DISPOSABLE, Gonda Theatre
What guarantees do working people in America have today?

From Global Lab Fellow, Jasmin Cardenas

What guarantees do working people in America have today? Do parallels exist between low wage temp workers/day laborers and career professionals? Over the course of two years actor and activist Jasmin Cardenas interviewed blue and white collar working people in a variety of fields to consider some of these questions. Voices of undocumented low-wage factory workers and educated professionals are brought to life in this Documentary theatre/Verbatim theatre solo play. (Photo Credit: Joel Maisonet)

 

ZANDEZI: Theatre Play

Incarceration, Innocence & Justice: Zandezi, Gonda Theatre

From Mitambo Theater and Global Lab Fellow Lloyd Nyikadzino of Zimbabwe;  Professor Marc Howard, Director, Prisons & Justice Initiative; Georgetown Students from PJI.

Is Prison a rehabilitation center or does it actually create more hardcore criminals from innocent people? Members of Georgetown’s Prisons & Justice Initiative and Zandezi artists discuss live excerpts from their provocative physical theater performance centering on the story of Philani who was wrongfully accused of a crime that he did not commit.

 

The Lab - logo

LAB SHARES: TABLETOP CONVERSATIONS ON NOTABLE PROJECTS, Harbin Tent(with refreshments)
Meet other artists and learn more about the work they are creating!

This Gathering exists online as well as onsite – there are many wonderful projects which we are honored to host in the online portal (check them out online or in the virtual viewing room in 036). This is an opportunity to meet the artists behind them and engage directly in small group conversations about the different works. Tonight’s Lab Shares include:

  • Roya Sadaf and Aziz Dildare, Afghanistan
  • Teresa Turiera-Puigho, Cultura i Conflicte, Barcelona.
Image of 3 men drawn for the project Drowning in Cairo part of The Gathering 2022

DROWNING IN CAIRO
It is May 2001 in Cairo. Moody, Khalid, and their servant Taha are on the Queen Boat, a gay nightclub docked on the Nile.

From Golden Thread Productions and Global Lab Fellow, Adam Ashraf Elsayigh, playwright

It is May 2001 in Cairo. Moody, Khalid, and their servant Taha are on the Queen Boat, a gay nightclub docked on the Nile. When an unexpected police raid results in the arrest and public humiliation of the attendees, the lives of these young men are altered forever. Adam Ashraf Elsayigh’s debut production weaves budding romances, class differences, and familial expectations into a loving portrait of three men who all struggle to rebuild their lives against all odds.

Lunch and Dinner image for The Gathering 2022

Post-Show Conversation, Gonda Theatre

From Golden Thread Productions and Global Lab Fellow Adam Ashraf Elsayigh, playwright

Mai EL-Sadany, Managing Director, Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP),  joins Sahar Assaf, director of Drowning in Cairo and Artistic Director of Golden Thread Productions, Adam Ashraf Elsayigh, Drowning in Cairo playwright and Global Fellow ‘20-22, and Salma Zohdi, Drowning in Cairo dramaturg, to discuss the play and its political implications.

Cultural Diplomacy Through the Lens of Hip Hop Culture: Why & The Urgency of Now Workshop

Location: Devine Studio Theatre

Workshop

 

 

Creative Writing and Climate Chaos Workshop

 

Location: Room 025

Workshop

 

 

 

 

Worker’s Teatro Workshop

Location: Room 036

Workshop

Risk Lab 

Location: Davis Center, Room 035

Performance

Black Circus 

Location: Devine Studio Theatre

Performance

How to Eat Mangoes

Location: Gonda Theatre

Performance

 

 

Lab Shares: Tabletop Conversations on Notable Projects

 

 

Location: Harbin Tent

Connection + Celebration Event

Performing Dangerously: 10th Anniversary Celebration

Location: Gonda Theatre

Performance and Community + Celebration Event

 

 

 

Resonant Bodies: Dance Party

Location: Harbin Tent

Connection + Celebration Event

Coffee Talks image for The Gathering 2022

Coffee Talks, Harbin Tent

Meet up with others to discuss the events of the previous day.

Cultural Diplomacy Through The Lens Of Hip Hop Culture Workshop image

Cultural Diplomacy Through The Lens of Hip Hop Culture, Devine Studio Theatre

Led by Junious Brickhouse

As a fully actualized global culture, consisting not only of music, but also language, fashion, and traditions, Hip Hop is a uniquely effective vehicle for cultural diplomacy around the world. Next Level is an initiative of the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs (ECA) at the U.S. Department of State, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Meridian International Center that brings multidisciplinary teams of Hip Hop Artist Educators to communities around the world to engage in cultural diplomacy by means of empowering local Hip Hop artists to create sustainable careers for themselves and sustainable institutions for their community. Through the lens of Hip Hop, we are able to engage in meaningful cross-cultural dialogue and effect change in the lives of individuals and communities, including our own. This workshop will share observations and best practices from Next Level residencies and encourage participants to identify places in their communities of practice where these principles could enhance communication, conflict transformation, economic development, and artistic excellence.

Creative Writing And Climate Chaos Workshop

Creative Writing and Climate Chaos, Room 025.

Led by Miranda Rose Hall, award-winning playwright, Founding Member Lub Dub Theater Co, NYC

 

Join award-winning playwright and Georgetown alum Miranda Rose Hall for a workshop about creative writing and climate chaos. The workshop will offer students a chance to imagine, write, and share fictional work about the realities of our times. We will focus on writing for performance, though writers of all disciplines are welcome.

WorkersTEATRO Workshop

WORKER’S TEATRO WORKSHOP

Led by Global Lab Fellow Jasmin Cardenas

Isaura Martinez, Organizer, & Co-Founder of WorkersTEATRO; Cynthia Nambo, and  Cirila C. López Workers and WorkersTEATRO Members; Jasmin Cardenas, Director & Co-Founder of WorkersTEATRO (Translation support); WorkersTEATRO Advocating for Change y Abogando para un Cambio Mejor.

Main tickets image for the Risk Lab a collection of The Gathering 2022

Risk Lab, Davis Center, Room 035

From Global Lab Fellow Ada Mukhina and collaborator Elina Kulikova

Welcome to Risk Lab! We are here to talk about risk in art. Be prepared for a series of artistic provocations that invite you to think, make decisions and take action. Risk Lab is a series of participatory real-time performances about risk in art and artists at risk. For each performance, Ada Mukhína (Russia/Germany) invites a new guest artist from a different corner of the world to join the audience in the theatre which is turned into a 360-degree video studio. The fourth episode of Risk Lab is developed especially for The Gathering in collaboration with Elina Kulikova, a Russian young experimental theatre-maker who often works with feminist and queer texts. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she went into exile in Tbilisi, Georgia.

Main image for Black Circus a collection of The Gathering 2022 woman in hat

Black Circus, Devine Studio Theatre

From Global Lab Fellow Princess Mhlongo and collaborator Albert Ibokwe Khoza, South Africa

Exhibits showcasing artifacts and actual people were popular in the western world during the colonial period. How do we deal with a shameful legacy that echoes into the present? Should we seek to erase it, bury it in the history books, or resurrect and acknowledge this difficult past? This work will dwell heavily on the early recorded study of black bodies as a “different species” to the white man. Performance artist Ibokwe Albert Khoza pays tribute to the spirit of Sarah Baartman and the many Africans whose lives and bodies were turned into a spectacle for white supremacist pleasure. We pay homage to our ancestry who gave up everything for the benefit of the world at large.

Main image for How to Eat Mangos collection of The Gathering 2022

How to Eat Mangoes, Gonda Theatre

From Global Lab Fellow Afshan d’souza lodhi, of Manchester, U.K.

 

How To Eat Mangoes is a performative, interactive lecture from our resident Rishta Aunty who sells mangoes by day and matchmakes at night. This sensual piece takes the audience through the intricacies of the mango and unearths the hidden sexual core that sits in the centre of our beings. When our hands are enough to rupture skin, do we bring a knife to a mango fight? Are we afraid of getting messy, of truly digging deep inside flesh and tasting honesty? How to Eat Mangoes is a radical antidote to the narratives of destruction and death that we are being fed by the mainstream media.

The Lab - logo

Lab Shares: Tabletop Conversations on Notable Projects, Harbin Tent

This Gathering exists online as well as onsite – there are so many wonderful projects which we are honored to host in the online portal (check them out online or in the virtual lounge in 036). This is an opportunity to meet the artists behind them and engage directly in small group conversations about the different works.

 

Timbuktu Renaissance – Cynthia Schneider and Lamine Diarra, Mali

SPACES – Simón Hanukai and Lauren Cox of Kaimera Productions, France & international

Revelation – Karin Coonrod, KenYatta Rogers, Sarah Marshall, D.C.

Performing Dangerously: 10th Anniversary Celebration image

Performing Dangerously: 10th Anniversary Celebration, Gonda Theatre

Inspired in part by Azar Nafisi (Lab Associate Artist and best-selling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran) and her new book Read Dangerously, this special evening of performances celebrates the courage and resilience of performing artists around the world who are creating courageous art in the context of danger.  Additional participants include many long-time Lab collaborators such as Belarus Free Theatre; Heather Raffo (9 Parts of Desire); Mélisande Short Colomb with a live excerpt from her celebrated virtual performance of Here I Am; performances from Ukrainian Playwrights Under Siege and Ukraine Diaries; Kenyatta Rogers and Ed Gero as James Baldwin and Studs Terkel; Bill Rauch, Inaugural Artistic Director of the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center; The Lab’s In Your Shoes; live music, and much more.

Resonant Bodies: Dance Party

Resonant Bodies: Dance Party, Harbin Tent

Resonant Bodies is an immersive and participatory performance celebrating the body as a culture-bearer and its movement as a tool for connection with the otherwise “other.” Amidst music, projections, and prompts, participants play games, mimic, repeat, respond, and dance. Words are only 7% of how we communicate. This is for the other 93%. Part of an ongoing research project in embodied listening, Resonant Bodies continues the Lab’s tradition of “Witnessing Across Difference,” In Your Shoes, and Performing One Another, to connect through music and movement, beneath and beyond words. Framing the ongoing work of theater and dance practitioners worldwide as an intentional tool for working across cultures, this project aspires to build empathy and trust through action and embodiment- replacing analysis with play and sublimating rage in dance. We celebrate reunions, resilience, and all that is yet to come. 

 

 

 

Chonta’s Sound: Drumming Workshop

 

 

Location: Devine Studio Theatre

Workshop

Puppets for the People Workshop

Location: Design Studio

Workshop

SPACES: Duets – Elevating Personal Stories through Performance

 

Location: Davis Center, Room 035

Workshop

Theatre, Asylum, and Magic: Devising The Cassette Shop

Location: Devine Studio Theatre

Performance

Lockdown Memory

Location: Gonda Theatre

Performance

Our One Earth: Artists Engaging Climate

Location: Gonda Theatre

Connection + Celebration Event

The Walk: Artists Engaging Migration and the Refugee Experience

Location: Gonda Theatre

Connection + Celebration Event

Closing Rituals

Location: Gonda Theatre

Connection + Celebration Event

**ADD-ON EVENT: Yemandja [Special Ticketed Performance at The Kennedy Center at 8:00pm EDT]

Coffee Talks image for The Gathering 2022

Coffee Talks, Harbin Tent

Meet up with others to discuss the events of the previous day.

Chonta's Sound: Drumming Workshop

Chonta’s Sound: Drumming Workshop, Devine Studio Theatre

Mauricio Nieto Lugo, Edilberto Castaño, and Inaugural Lab Fellow Manuel Francisco Viveros

 

Explore two representative rhythms of the music and culture of the Colombian South Pacific Coast Region: El Bunde and El Currulao.

 

This workshop aims to present, identify and explore two representative rhythms of the music and culture of the Colombian South Pacific Coast Region: El Bunde and El Currulao. As a rhythm and as a rite, El Bunde is an important expression in certain Afro-descendant cultures south of the Colombian coast in the Pacific Ocean. Its cadence, the call and response in its song, and the relationship with life and death are part of its main characteristics. For its part, the Currulao encompasses an entire sound complex from which many of the rhythms that are enjoyed in the coastal towns of the Pacific Ocean in Colombia and northern Ecuador emerge. This hour and a half workshop has three parts (Colombian musical diversity, Ay oí, and Of river and sea, navigating the movement) seeks to approach people to the unknown Colombia.

Puppets for the People Workshop

Puppets for the People Workshop, Design Studio

Jessica Litwak, Artistic Director of The H.E.A.T. Collective, core member of Theatre Without Borders, Fulbright Scholar.

 

Learn the tools for building a puppet using simple materials and bringing it to life.

 

Join theatre artist and drama therapist Jessica Litwak for this fun, creative and therapeutic puppet-making workshop. Learn the tools for building a puppet using simple materials and bringing it to life. These playful puppet-building workshops have been done in conflict zones in and with traumatized populations in Palestine, Israel, India, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, and all over Europe and the U.S., with kids from age 4-18 and with all types of adult groups serve local individuals by encouraging self-expression and community building. The workshops have also been extraordinarily effective for training actors, drama therapists, Theatre of the Oppressed practitioners, theatre makers, social workers and human rights workers. First, a warm up serves to provide the participants with a context for the day. Each person discovers what sort of being s/he/they wants to create. Then we build the “brain” of the puppet; workshop participants use objects, pens, paint, and paper to draw and/or write, and this creation becomes the actual core of the puppet head or “brain”. After building this inner life for the puppet, the heads and faces are formed around the brain with newspaper, we find the face in the paper, and hold and mold the face with masking tape. Then the puppets’ faces are decorated. Finally, the participants become puppeteers, and introduce their new creations. Jessica Litwak is an Internationally recognized theatre educator, playwright, director, performer, puppet builder and drama therapist. 



Kaimera

SPACES: Duets – Elevating Personal Stories through Performance , Davis Center, Room 035

SPACES is an immersive experience created by Kaimera Productions that merges contemporary performance with the ancient art of storytelling. At the heart of the piece, local residents share intimate real-life stories. By weaving these stories together with dance, music, and multimedia, SPACES transports audiences to a place where the magical and the quotidian meet. This interactive workshop, facilitated by SPACES Co-Creators Lauren Cox and Simón Adinia Hanukai, will explore this meeting of the magical and the quotidian, by guiding participants through the creation of art/story duets of their own. Participants are invited to come with a short (2-3 minutes) personal story in mind, that takes us to a place that they call Home. Come prepared to listen, exchange and create together!

Theatre, Asylum, And Magic: Devising The Cassette Shop

Theatre, Asylum, and Magic: Devising the Cassette Shop, Devine Studio Theatre

Asif Majid, Lead Deviser; Nikoo Mamdoohi, Director; Tameem, Performer; Kartika, Performer; Sarah Priddy, Dramaturg; Mariele Fluegeman, Dramaturg

 

Luciar and Alé are two strangers who have an unexpected meeting in the most unlikely of places: a cassette shop. Their first conversation is weird, confusing, and complicated. However, it soon becomes clear that there is much more to their relationship than meets the eye… An original production, The Cassette Shop is a mix of testimony, ethnopoetic, devised, and documentary theatre. Created by a group of asylum-seeking Storytellers based in Washington, DC, facilitated by Lead Deviser Asif Majid. Hailing from countries as diverse as Iraq, Indonesia, The Gambia, Venezuela, China, and elsewhere, the group worked for over a year to create a production that is true to the experience of asylum-seeking, while emphasizing the hope and hilarity that is so often central to such journeys. Theatre, Asylum, and Magic: Devising The Cassette Shop offers an excerpted reading of The Cassette Shop, followed by a panel with the Storytellers and creative team, and dialogue with the audience. 

Lockdown Memory, Gonda Theatre

Lockdown Memory is a performance – lecture using the new multimedia languages in dialogue with those of the stage, intertwining theater, video art and documentary films through a remote collaboration with artists from all over the world. Textual and visual notes, physical and musical scores, conversations in zoom and scenes from the daily life of the artists involved are the dramaturgical fragments in progress that bounce off the walls of an aseptic room in search of a single glimmer, that virtual window open to a world , which had to mark its own borders, due to the pandemic. The performers on stage relive the different moments and situations caused by the lockdown, giving voice to the delicate social situation of the countries of the artists involved: from the protests of Black Lives Matter in the United States to the social revolt in Chile, from the mass exodus from the Indian megalopolis to the return to normality, after the tragedy, in the city of Wuhan.

With the support of the Italian Cultural Institute – Washington DC
This project would not be possible without the partnership of ATER Fondazione – Modena and the following sponsors
Lockdown Memory Sponsors
Our One Earth: Artists Engaging Climate

Our One Earth: Artists Engaging Climate, Gonda Theatre

Join us in conversations and projects centered around climate and the world around us.

Artists and activists engaging with the climate crisis and our relationships to the land, visioning ways of care share excerpts of their work, methodologies, and visions for the future.

Katie Pearl, Assistant Professor, Wesleyan University; acclaimed theater-maker; director of Ocean Filibuster; Co-Artistic Director of PearlDamour

Kiyo Gutierrez, Global Lab Fellow, Guadalajara, Mexico 

Erfan Nabizada, youth climate activist from Afghanistan

Myiah Smith, Georgetown alum and performer in The Lab’s We Hear You: A Climate Archive

Moderated by Abner Torres Delina Jr., Global Lab Fellow, Philippines

The Walk: Artists Engaging Migration And The Refugee Experience

 The Walk: Artists Engaging Migration and the Refugee Experience, Gonda Theatre

Join us in conversations with projects and artists engaging with migration and how we move together across boundaries and borders, share excerpts of their work, methodologies, and visions for the future.

Moderated by Devika Ranjan, Inaugural Lab Fellow, Albany Park Theater Project 

Excerpt of Oyeme performed by Daniela Fujigaki and Sarah Hernandez 

Eric Swartz, director of Óyeme

Hilda Tijerina, Theater for Change Coordinator at Imagination Stage

Nickii Wantakan Arcado, Graduate Student with the Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues

Amir Nizar Zuabi and David Lan, The Walk 

Closing Rituals for The Gathering 2022 image

Closing Rituals and Imagining Forward, Gonda Theatre

Join us in celebration of four-days of worldwide artistry, creation, community, and gathering.

Come together to celebrate all that we have built in community with one another and look to the future together.

Yemandja-image

** THE ADD-ON EVENT: YEMANDJA
Attend YEMANDJA at The Kennedy Center as a special bonus event to The Gathering!
Inspired by her ancestors, her family, and Africa’s resilience, singer and storyteller extraordinaire Angélique Kidjo conjures up Yemandja, a timely theatrical work that is at once a family drama and historical thriller, redolent of Greek tragedy and infused with themes of love, betrayal, honor, free will, and the horror and injustice of slavery. Conceived by three-time Grammy winner Kidjo, and a stellar team of creative collaborators, Yemandja makes its D.C. premiere at the Kennedy Center in May 2022. Featuring a cast of eight performers and four musicians, this Kennedy Center co-commission is a work of magical realism that illuminates what happens when people are robbed of their culture.

DISCOUNT TICKETS WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR ATTENDEES OF THE GATHERING.

The promo code is 462682, and the URL that will automatically add a 20% discount is here: https://www.kennedy-center.org/whats-on/explore-by-genre/theater/2021-2022/yemandja/?promocode=462682
 

 

Throughout this multi-day event, artists will be joined by thought-leaders, policymakers, activists, scholars, and the next generation of change-makers for inspiring productions, vibrant discussions, pop-up performances, forums, and workshops. We will witness and explore projects ranging from migration and refugee issues to climate change to political polarization to freedom of expression to the role of the arts on health and well-being. We know Covid-19 makes planning uncertain, but we’re hoping to gather both in-person and virtually during this time period.

 

                                            If you have any additional questions you can email us at GlobalLab@georgetown.edu

 

                                                              

                                                                 Performing Dangerously, The Lab’s Tenth Anniversary Celebration

                                                                                                             Friday, May 6, 7:30pm 

                                                          Gonda Theater, Davis Performing Arts Center, Georgetown University 

Inspired in part by Azar Nafisi (Lab Associate Artist and best-selling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran) and her new book Read Dangerously, this special evening of performances celebrates the courage and resilience of performing artists around the world who are creating courageous art in the context of danger. Participants include  many long-time Lab collaborators such as Belarus Free Theatre; Heather Raffo (9 Parts of Desire)Mélisande Short Colomb with a live excerpt from her celebrated virtual performance of Here I Am; Diaries from Ukraine, featuring youth voices from the war; and more.

 

 

As we welcome you to The Gathering, we want you to be comfortable where you stay. The following information includes suggested lodging options in neighborhoods, which are accessible to Georgetown University by walking or public transportation. We’ve included hotels and Airbnb searches for your convenience alongside the distance of the lodging options from the main campus where most of The Gathering’s activities will take place. For some of the hotels, Georgetown University has special rates. To access these rates, click on the name of the hotel and your browser will direct you to the university portal. In general, Airbnb options will be less expensive than hotels.

 

Georgetown University Main Campus Address:
3700 O St NW, Washington D.C., 20057

Georgetown Neighborhood

Georgetown Inn – University Rates Available
10 minute walk from campus
3 minute Uber/Lyft
$270-350 per night
1310 Wisconsin Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20037

The Westin Georgetown– University Rates Available
30 minute walk from campus
10 minute Uber/Lyft
$273-475 per night
2350 M Street NW
Washington, DC 20037

Airbnb Options
Walking distance from campus
~10 minute walk
~3-5 minute Uber/Lyft

 

Glover Park

Glover Park Hotel– University Rates Available
25 minute walk from campus
6-10 minute Uber/Lyft
$217-279 per night
2505 Wisconsin Avenue NW
Washington, D.C., 20007

Airbnb Options
Walking distance from campus
~15-25 minute walk
~5-10 minute Uber/Lyft

 

Foxhall

Airbnb Options
Walking distance from campus
~10-15 minute walk
~3-5 minute Uber/Lyft

 

Rosslyn/Ballston, Arlington, Virginia

 Marriott Key Bridge– University Rates Available
Georgetown University Bus stops near the Rosslyn Metro Stop at 19th Street and North Moore Street. Find the bus schedule here. Bus stop is 5 minute walk from Marriott Key Bridge and will bring you to the center of campus. Walk across Key Bridge from Marriott to campus is about 25 minutes, 10 minute Uber/Lyft ride.

$200-225 per night
1401 Lee Highway
Arlington, VA 22209

 Comfort Inn Ballston
10 minute walk to Ballston Metro Stop at Fairfax Drive and N. Stafford Street, short metro ride to Rosslyn Metro Stop. Georgetown University Bus stops near the Rosslyn Metro Stop at 19th Street and North Moore Street. Find the bus schedule here. 15 minute Uber/Lyft ride.

$150-175 per night
1211 North Glebe Road,
Arlington, VA 22201

 Airbnb Options
Georgetown University Bus stops near the Rosslyn Metro Stop at 19th Street and North Moore Street. Find the bus schedule here. Walk across Key Bridge from Rosslyn to campus is ~25-30 minutes, ~10 minute Uber/Lyft ride.

 

DuPont 

 The Fairfax at Embassy Row– University Rates Available
Georgetown University Bus stops near the DuPont Metro Stop at 20th Street and Massachusetts Avenue. Find the bus schedule here. Bus stop is 2 minute walk from The Fairfax and will bring you to the center of campus. 15 minute Uber/Lyft ride to main campus.

$225-250 per night
2100 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, D.C., 20008

 The St. Gregory Hotel– University Rates Available
Georgetown University Bus stops near the DuPont Metro Stop at 20th Street and Massachusetts Avenue. Find the bus schedule here. Bus stop is 8 minute walk from St. Gregory and will bring you to the center of campus. 15 minute Uber/Lyft ride to main campus.

$335-$360 per night
2033 M Street NW
Washington, D.C., 20036

 Airbnb Options
Georgetown University Bus stops near the DuPont Metro Stop at 20th Street and Massachusetts Avenue. Find the bus schedule here. ~15 minute Uber/Lyft ride to main campus.

 See additional hotels with Georgetown University Rates Available here.

 

See D.C. bus map here.

Covid regulations for The Gathering will remain in compliance with those set forth by Georgetown University.  Currently, that includes full vaccination & booster for all attendees as well as masking indoors.  Eating and drinking outdoors only.

For more information about our COVID-19 guidelines, you can reference Georgetown University’s Public Health and University Operations guidelines.

Skip to content