The three 2050 Open Studio/Open Dialogue play readings will also include excerpts of performances by Western Massachusetts youth. These artistic reflections on 2050 will be introduced by scholars Alberto Sandoval, Louis Prisock III, and Deirdre Robinson. Pat Romney will facilitate discussions with audience members in response to the evening and the 2050 theme.

Social scientists predict that by the year 2050, people of color will outnumber people of European descent in the United States. PROJECT 2050 is a multi-year artistic exploration of the cultural implications of this significant demographic change. According to Roberta Uno, Artistic Director at New WORLD Theater, the project was catalyzed by the changing demographics in Western Massachusetts. "When we started the theater over twenty years ago," states Uno, "people of color were very few in this area. Now, for example, Latinos comprise 30% of the population in Holyoke and one in four students in the Amherst school system are students of color."

The New WORLD Theater officially launched PROJECT 2050 in July, when it hosted a one-week planning retreat to convene 43 western Massachusetts youth, scholars, artists, and college-age counselor leaders. The retreat served to explore major themes as they relate to the racial demographics of the United States in the year 2050. Each day, scholars presented information and led discussions regarding the selected topics of lies, space, money, and power. Artistic workshops involving poetry, playwriting, theater, break dancing, and music augmented the discussions and provided forums for creative response and reflection. The week ended with a public program at which youth participants presented their work.

The Open Studio/Open Dialogues will build upon the Project 2050’s summer program and extend a creative dialogue to audience and community members. Partnerships with WMUA 91.1 and other radio and video outlets will allow the New WORLD Theater to record these dialogues and broadcast them to a wide regional audience.

Jorge Cortinas has won several fiction prizes and has been published in magazines such as Puerto del Sol, Ciptali, Frontera, and Socialist Review. His plays include Maleta Mulata, Odiseo, could you stop for some bread and eggs on the way home?, and Sleepwalkers, which won the Carbonell Award for Best New Work at the Area Stage in Miami. Cortinas was recently named "Playwright of the Year" by El Nuevo Herald's year-end list.

Carl Hancock Rux has published poetry, fiction, and experimental dramas in numerous journals and anthologies, including Action! Nuyorican Theater Festival Anthology, Soul's Survival, Black Power, Politics and Pleasure, Aloud!, Korper Lust Sprache, and Listen Up! Spoken Word Poetry. Rux was also selected by New York Times Magazine as "One of the Thirty Artists Under the Age of Thirty Most Likely to Influence Culture Over the Next Thirty Years." On Thursday, November 9, Rux will appear with Professor Louis Prisock III from Mount Holyoke College at the Martin Luther King Community Center on Rutland Street in Springfield. The program will begin at 7:30pm.

Alice Tuan is the author of Last of the Suns and Ikebana, which were produced at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and East West Players. She is the 2000 recipient of the Mark Taper Forum's Robert Sherwood Award and also a writer in ACT/Hedgebrook Women Playwrights Festival. A graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Brown University, Tuan is also a recipient of the NEA/TCG Playwright Residency Grant at East West Players. She will appear on Tuesday, November 21 with Professor Deirdre Royster from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst Regional at 7:30pm.

The high school age youth from Amherst, Holyoke, and Springfield will be performing works they created using theater, step, break dancing, and poetry. This project has been possible in large part by the Animating Democracy initiative, a program of Americans for the Arts, funded by the Ford Foundation.