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WORD from the Artistic Director  

"... there is a deeper area, a wellspring which is resourceful, regenerative, and useful ... that place at the root of mind, below habits of thinking.  It's at that level that we know as much as we can ever know about anything.  That is the level at which we truly love, at which we truly exist ... and it's at that level that we experience human solidarity."      
 ~ Sekou Sundiata (1948-2007)

The level of being articulated by the great American poet Sekou Sundiata is the level at which artists create, the level that great performances take us to. This season, New WORLD Theater invites you to go there with us. To celebrate and contemplate, to deepen relationships and make new connections. Roberta Uno, NWT's founding artistic director, and Talvin Wilks, interim artistic director 2002-04, each share beautiful, anecdotal remembrances of Sekou in this issue.

In the wake of Sekou's passing, it was fitting that we began our 29th season with poetry. This year's Community Spirit showcase, supporting the work of local artists, featured Lenelle Moise in Womb-Words, Thirsting. Leading up to her performance, Lenelle developed this solo project during a two-week residency with NWT in the department of theater at Smith College. Her celebratory and provocative voice as a queer Haitian-American artist, aesthetically gorgeous and politically powerful, blessed audiences over two interactive evenings in the Hallie Flanagan Theater in September.

In October, local collaborations continued with the Somali Women's Project, an arts-based economic self-sufficiency initiative, recently renamed Walaalo! (meaning "sisters" in Somali). This year's Somali Community Festival in Springfield, MA, featured Somali hip-hop artist Musa and lively performances by Walaalo! members.

In November, we welcome writer/director Concepción León and the Sa'as Tun Theater Company from Yucatán, Mexico, with Mestiza Power. This original interview-theater piece reveals the powerful dignity of Mayan women amidst the complex challenges of contemporary indigenous life. Mestiza Power will be performed in Spanish, with English supertitles in the first translation of this play by Harley Erdman, commissioned by NWT.

Along with new artists and renewed relationships, we welcome two new staff members this season: celebrated musician Angel Rodriguez as our Project 2050 Coordinator, and Nicole Young bringing fresh ideas to the new position of Audience & Community Development Coordinator - including some great ways you can get involved with NWT. You can read more about Angel and Nicole in our People section. We are excited about the energy and creativity of our growing team!

This season is full, challenging, beautiful, and will take us deeper - to that level of love and revolution, creativity and solidarity. Join us.

Peace,

Andrea Assaf, Artistic Director  

[printable pdf of this article]

SPOTLIGHT ON SEKOU SUNDIATA

By Priscilla Page, Program Curator

Sekou Sundiata passed away on July 18 of this year. He was a creative genius whose soul lives on every time a poet puts pen to paper. While his presence as an artistic leader and cultural visionary will be sadly missed, I take comfort knowing that he has left us a bountiful legacy with his words. Sekou had an artistic home at New WORLD Theater and I have asked Roberta Uno, founding Artistic Director of New WORLD Theater and current Arts and Culture program officer at the Ford Foundation, and Talvin Wilks, Interim Artistic Director (2002-04) and freelance director, dramaturg, and writer, to reflect on their relationships with Sekou and their involvement with his creative work during the past ten years here.

Remembering Sekou by Roberta Uno, founding Artistic Director, New WORLD Theater, 1979-2002.
Sekou and I became friends over the years through his theater works. First through New WORLD Theater's   incubating role in the multi-stage development of a play called Eljiah , that transformed to become Udu, a visionary, large-scale, ocean-spanning piece in collaboration with the brilliant composer/trombonist, Craig Harris, and the extraordinary director Talvin Wilks. Later through my role as dramaturg for a contrasting piece, an intimate solo epic, blessing the boats . And also in an odd (cosmic?) coincidence, through his last work, the 51st (dream) state.

Sekou told me a story that he would later recount from his experience as he went around the country conducting his community sings - gatherings in towns and cities where he would invite folks to sing songs about America together, as a way to spark discussion about who we are as a nation. At one session, they sang "Lift Every Voice and Sing," the Black National Anthem. The song started out well but after the first verse, voices dropped out and by the third or fourth verse there was only one small voice from the back of the room, which to his astonishment - "Roberta, it's a long song! I mean, most Black people know the first verse and chorus, but all four verses !?" - was coming from an elderly little Asian woman. He told me that he had to interview her and then shared his discovery, laughing, "Of course, she turned out to be your mother!" So Grandma Kiku is part of that piece's video installation, an unexpected remix of history and future.

It was never a surprise for me to get a call from Sekou on his way to, from, or in a hospital. He was a cat who fully used up all of his nine lives. No one could open a conversation like he did, as in, "Roberta, you won't believe this, I broke my neck."   So I wasn't surprised by his last call in July and laughter, even then.

The day after that morning of deafening thunder that marked his passing, from a window I thought I saw Sekou in the edges of a crowd ... that lingering walk, that gaunt shoulder carriage and loose frame, that deep skin tone, graying at the edges: a barometer of his health. My heart raced, and I struggled to catch him in the full frame of my eye, only to discover it was an apparently homeless man in tattered clothing, following a different meter than the bustling crowd. I recognized those same eyes of witness, and in an instant, lost him again as a shoulder turned and the crowd surged on. I've thought a lot since then about what Sekou had wanted me - had wanted us - to see.

Our season continues with
November 29 & 30 - Mestiza Power

February 14 & 15, 2008
D-Projects in Scratch & Burn

April 3-6, 2008
Intersection V Conference

Great Ways to Get Involved
with NWT
By Nicole M. Young,
NWT Audience and Community Development Coordinator

New WORLD Theater is quickly approaching its 30th anniversary and we continue to grow as we reach this momentous milestone.   In addition to our season of innovative performances, new work development, community events, Project 2050, our youth program, and Intersection, our biennial conference and festival, we host artist-led workshops, give guest lectures, and have begun a series of community forums with the goal of receiving direct feedback on our work from you. From local artists to administrators, donors to designers, production staff to community members, we are proud to say "it takes a village" to share and live our vision. [ Article continued below ]

News & Notes from the NWT Family [printable pdf of this article]

Nicole M. Young steps into the newly created position of Audience and Community Development Coordinator. In this role, she will cultivate new audiences, guide grassroots fundraising efforts, coordinate volunteers and foster community partnerships. In addition to having extensive experienced in arts management, Nicole is a classically trained musician (clarinet, flute, viola and sax) and a theater director, dramaturg and actor who has done both stage and film work. She recently received her M.F.A. in Theatre Management from Wayne State University in Detroit, her hometown. She trained in audience development through her work with Classical Roots, a major fundraiser for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's African-American programming and outreach, and served on its steering committee for three years. She arrived in September and as a newcomer to the area, Nicole says, "My Pioneer Valley experience so far has only been warm and welcoming. Meeting and working with such great people has made this huge transition easier."

Yasmin Ahmed, a leader of the Walaao! Somali Women's Project, has been honored with a 2007 Ripple Effect Award from the Women's Fund of Western Massachusetts. Yasmin is one of the two Community Organizers with the project, an arts-based economic development initiative with the Somali community in Western Mass. New WORLD Theater is the lead partner on the project, which is supported in part by the Women's Fund. The annual Ripple Effect Award recognizes women and girls who are "making a difference in their communities and making the most of their opportunities." It celebrates individual achievement that reflects the Fund's goal of building "a society in which the voices and potential of women and girls are more fully realized." At the awards ceremony during the Women's Fund annual meeting on October 4th, Yasmin was commended for helping to "break the isolation of local Somali women immigrants and to bring them together as an empowered community" through her work with the Walaalo! project. NWT Artistic Director Andrea Assaf praised her as "the connection that keeps the project going [and] the golden thread that ties the community together."

If you have exciting news to share, please e-mail Chris Rohmann at crohmann@acad.umass.edu or call him at 413.577.0569. Please include your affiliation and your contact information and we'll share your updates in an upcoming e-newsletter!

Sekou influenced my artistic journey for fifteen years. I first went to Paris because of him, I discovered that "anything can happen on the bandstand" because of him, I learned to "stay in the car" when I was told to "stay in the car" because of him, and I remain an artist because of him.

Through my various involvements with New WORLD, including a two-year stint as Artistic Director, I have wondered if the Amherst community members ever truly understood the importance of the artists who traveled in their midst, for there has been no artist more significant than Sekou, and from him many brilliant artists have followed: Carl Hancock Rux, Rha Goddess, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Mildred Ruiz, Steven Sapp, and now Lenelle Moïse, brilliant poets, wordsmiths all. From The Return of Elijah to Udu, blessing the boats and The America Project which later became 51 st (dream) state, wherever Sekou went, New WORLD Theater went ... Brooklyn Academy of Music (twice), Europe, and across the United States, New WORLD and Amherst were connected to his work, seen as an important home to the creation of his artistry, and always celebrated as a place of daring. Through him, his great spirit, his inspiring call to action, we were never brighter. We must remember, we shall remember.

[printable pdf of this article

BETWEEN THE LINES

Notes on Process - An Interview on Translation
with Harley Erdman
By Priscilla Page

On November 29 and 30, New WORLD Theater will present Mestiza Power by Concepción León Mora and the Sa'as Tun theater company. This poetic, powerfully performed new work from Yucatán, Mexico, is performed in Spanish. New WORLD commissioned Harley Erdman, professor of theater in the Department of Theater at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, to translate this piece and provide English supertitles.

Harley Erdman is a translator, theater historian, playwright, and dramaturg with specialties in Jewish-American theater and Spanish and Latin American theater. He has published numerous articles on the history of Jewish representation on the American stage, as well as the book Staging the Jew . In addition to Mestiza Power, he has translated Arístides Vargas' La casa de Rigoberta mira al sur , which was presented by NWT in November, 2004; Vicente Leñero's La Mudanza, as well as Spanish Golden Age plays by Calderón, Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina. He is currently working on a collection of plays by 17th-century Spanish women. He is a winner of the Association for Hispanic Classic Theater's Translation Prize.

I recently spoke with Harley about his approach to translation, the multicultural background that informs his work, and his longtime relationship with New WORLD Theater.

Translation is a large part of your creative and academic life. Can you talk about how it came to be central to your work?

HARLEY: I grew up in a family where many languages were spoken. My paternal grandparents were Eastern-European Jewish immigrants to Cuba who met, fell in love and got married in Havana, where my Dad was born. My grandfather spoke a mix of Spanish, Yiddish, English, Russian, you name it. We used to joke: "Grandpa can speak five languages, none of them fluently." In addition to my extended family speaking a lot of Spanish, another branch of the Erdmans ended up in Paris, where they still live, so French has place in my "linguistic heritage" too. I think growing up hearing a lot of languages makes you sensitive to languages in general, especially to your own native language, and you end up doing a lot of translating in your head, almost as a way of being. I also think I have a natural tendency toward wanting to let people in on discoveries that I've made. I read something in Spanish, it excites me, it attracts me, it puzzles me - and it makes me wonder: "How can I help this piece find its way to an English-speaking audience?" You could call this the translator's "natural instinct." It is certainly mine.

Can you describe how translating a play for publication differs from translating a script into supertitles? What is your process?

HARLEY: The initial step in the process is identical. I attempt to come up with a faithful, accurate, poetic, and artistic version of the play, in its entirety, in English, acknowledging that any translation is ultimately an interpretation. At that point, for publication, you're largely done. For supertitles, there is another step in the process: transferring that translation to slides. This inevitably requires making the translation more compact, boiling it down, so to speak, and making some translation choices that will make the piece readily digestible to an audience that needs to read it in the moment, slide-by-slide, with just a few seconds per slide. In this case, you cannot be a purist.

What are your thoughts on translating classical as well as contemporary plays from Latin America? What have you discovered in terms of themes, ideas, and structure in your translation work that you feel should be shared with English-speaking audiences?

HARLEY: My latest thoughts on this great question relate to resisting the urge to make everything accessible, colloquial, and easy. Latin American plays have their own syntax, based in Spanish; they have their own energy, their own vision of the universe. Latin America is not the United States, it is different. I'm striving more and more to preserve that difference so that audiences really get a flavor of experiencing another culture and way of speaking and way of thinking, even though the medium is still the English language. If I can do that, without making a work that is clear in Spanish become obscure in English, then I've reached my goal.

Can you tell us about your involvement with New WORLD Theater?

HARLEY: There's been so much involvement, on so many levels, that it's hard to know where to begin. It runs the gamut from team teaching a course on contemporary playwrights of color with Roberta Uno [founding Artistic Director of New WORLD Theater and former faculty member in the Department Of Theater] to collaborating with Talvin Wilks [interim Artistic Director, 2002-04], Andrea Assaf and you in the creation of a Certificate in Multicultural Theater Practice. Being a creative person, I've probably been most excited about creative projects with NWT, including dramaturging Chitra Divakaruni's Clothes for the summer playlab nearly ten years ago to creating the West Side Stories interview-theater piece with Roberta and Pioneer Valley Performing Arts High School students about five years ago. The two supertitle translations have been exciting creative projects as well, and I have fond memories of working with the Nicaraguan artists on La casa de Rigoberta mira al sur a few years ago. In any case, there are a million reasons why NWT is a treasure for students and community members and academics here in Western Massachusetts, but for me, personally, speaking selfishly, it's been about collaboration and friendships.

Lastly, can you describe anything memorable about the projects you mention?

HARLEY : La casa de Rigoberta is freshest in my mind. Sometimes translating can be a lonely business, but this was an intensively collaborative experience. I created an initial translation that I converted to a PowerPoint slide presentation, which I brought with me to the premiere of the show's U.S. tour at the Latino Theatre Festival in Los Angeles. I ended up involved in actually operating the projections on opening night. You become a performer, right along with the actors on stage, as you react and respond in real time to the words spoken on stage and make sure you hit the cues. Probably more anxiety-provoking than actually being on stage! Then, when the show arrived in the Five College area, as part of NWT's season, it was gratifying to take a seat in the audience and see how the supertitles had become an important part of the overall event. The idea of supertitles intrigued me. I'm fascinated by this medium, which makes possible international, intercultural, and inter-lingual theater events.

[printable pdf of this article]

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Great Ways to Get Involved with NWT
By Nicole M. Young, NWT Audience and Community Development Coordinator                                                                        

New WORLD Theater is quickly approaching its 30th anniversary and we continue to grow as we reach this momentous milestone.   In addition to our season of innovative performances, new work development, community events, Project 2050, our youth program, and Intersection, our biennial conference and festival, we host artist-led workshops, give guest lectures, and have begun a series of community forums with the goal of receiving direct feedback on our work from you. From local artists to administrators, donors to designers, production staff to community members, we are proud to say "it takes a village" to share and live our vision.

Community involvement has been at the center of our success over the past 30 years. As we look to the future, we understand the value of your direct involvement and our relationships with individuals and groups in Western Massachusetts. As the new Audience and Community Development Coordinator, I am here to nurture and cultivate these essential relationships. Together we can sustain your voice at New WORLD Theater.

There are many ways to get involved with New WORLD Theater and help us widen our circle. They include:

• Volunteer to work with community-based programs such as Project 2050 and Walaalo!The Somali Women's Project
• Volunteer to work at Intersection V this April, and attend the conference for free
• Usher at our New Works for a New WORLD summer performances  
• Become a spokesperson for us by spreading the word about the work we do  
• Sponsor students or low-income families to attend a NWT performance through the UMass Fine Arts Center's Angel Tickets program
• Make a tax deductible contribution or an in-kind donation to support our programs  
• Join the Community Spirit Circle by donating or raising $250 or more to support NWT's community-based programming

            Enhancing your involvement, whether through a gift of time, money, or both, will help facilitate forums for creative expression for artists and activists of color; support youth and artist development; and foster dialogue among diverse communities.

            With your support, we can continue to present innovative, progressive, impactful art - ensuring our place as an arts leader with a national as well as international reputation as a visionary cultural institution.

For more information on these exciting opportunities, please contact me at 413-545-9591 or nmyoung@acad.umass.edu .

I look forward to getting to know each and every person involved with NWT!

[printable pdf of this article]

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