CSCW Bonus Reprise: Jan Cohen Cruz - Meeting the Moment

This Bonus episode of Change the Story / Change the World is in celebration of the publishing of Meeting the Moment: Socially Engaged Performance - 1965-2020 by Those Who Lived It, by Jan Cohen Cruz and Rad Pereira.

Hi this is Bill Cleveland. I'd like to welcome you to a Bonus episode of Change the Story / Change the World in celebration of a publishing milestone. For the past 4 decades Jan Cohen Cruz has been working at the crossroads of theater and social change, as a performer, as a teacher, and as a storyteller documenting the continuing evolution of socially engaged performance. Now, I'm very happy to announce that her new book Meeting the Moment, shines a light on that extraordinary history by sharing the stories of the people lived it.

In this episode, first broadcast in November of 2021, Jan talks about her own history as an activist, performer and teacher, and the genesis of Meeting the Moment, which was recently released by New Village Press. Links to both New Village, and a related episode featuring Carlton Turner who wrote the book's forward can be found in our show notes.

Jan Cohen-Cruz has given a lot to the field of arts-based community development. By that, I mean that there's a significant body of academic and community-based artwork, scholarship, teaching, and organizing that are absolutely covered with her fingerprints.

BIO

Jan Cohen-Cruz was the founding editor of Public: A Journal of Imagining America. She directed Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (2007-12), and for 28 years before that, was a professor at NYU, directing a minor in applied theatre and initiating socially-engaged projects and courses. She wrote Engaging Performance: Theatre as Call and Response and Local Acts: Community‑Based Performance in the US. She edited Radical Street Performance and co‑edited Playing Boal: Theatre, Therapy, Activism and A Boal Companion. Jan was also a University Professor at Syracuse University. In 2012, she received the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Award for Leadership in Community-Based Theatre and Civic Engagement. Here latest book, Meeting the Moment: Socially Engaged Theater, 1965 To 2020 written with Rad Pereira will published by New Village Press in May 2022.

Notable Mentions (in order of appearance)

Carlton Turner is a brilliant artist and creative change agent whose work across the country and in his hometown of Utica Mississippi dramatically proves that if you can "see" a different future you can make make a different future. He makes this point and much more in his eloquent introduction to Meeting the Moment, the new book by this episode's guest Jan Cohen Cruz and Rad Pereira.

This Bonus episode of Change the Story / Change the World is in celebration of the publishing of Meeting the Moment: Socially Engaged Performance - 1965-2020 by Those Who Lived It, by Jan Cohen Cruz and Rad Pereira.

Hi this is Bill Cleveland. I'd like to welcome you to a Bonus episode of Change the Story / Change the World in celebration of a publishing milestone. For the past 4 decades Jan Cohen Cruz has been working at the crossroads of theater and social change, as a performer, as a teacher, and as a storyteller documenting the continuing evolution of socially engaged performance. Now, I'm very happy to announce that her new book Meeting the Moment, shines a light on that extraordinary history by sharing the stories of the people lived it.

In this episode, first broadcast in November of 2021, Jan talks about her own history as an activist, performer and teacher, and the genesis of Meeting the Moment, which was recently released by New Village Press. Links to both New Village, and a related episode featuring Carlton Turner who wrote the book's forward can be found in our show notes.

Jan Cohen-Cruz has given a lot to the field of arts-based community development. By that, I mean that there's a significant body of academic and community-based artwork, scholarship, teaching, and organizing that are absolutely covered with her fingerprints.

BIO

Jan Cohen-Cruz was the founding editor of Public: A Journal of Imagining America. She directed Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (2007-12), and for 28 years before that, was a professor at NYU, directing a minor in applied theatre and initiating socially-engaged projects and courses. She wrote Engaging Performance: Theatre as Call and Response and Local Acts: Community‑Based Performance in the US. She edited Radical Street Performance and co‑edited Playing Boal: Theatre, Therapy, Activism and A Boal Companion. Jan was also a University Professor at Syracuse University. In 2012, she received the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Award for Leadership in Community-Based Theatre and Civic Engagement. Here latest book, Meeting the Moment: Socially Engaged Theater, 1965 To 2020 written with Rad Pereira will published by New Village Press in May 2022.

Notable Mentions (in order of appearance)

Carlton Turner is a brilliant artist and creative change agent whose work across the country and in his hometown of Utica Mississippi dramatically proves that if you can "see" a different future you can make make a different future. He makes this point and much more in his eloquent introduction to Meeting the Moment, the new book by this episode's guest Jan Cohen Cruz and Rad Pereira. You can hear more from Carlton in Episode 47

New Village Press: “The mission of New Village Press is to promote and enrich public discussion and understanding of issues vital to the development of healthy, creative, and socially just communities. To that end, New Village publishes transdisciplinary books that animate emerging movements in societal transformation. In conjunction, the Press also sponsors lectures, forums, and exhibitions for the public, especially for those communities that are underserved.”

Augusto Boal, was a Brazilian theatre practitioner, drama theorist, and political activist. He was the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, a theatrical form originally used in radical left popular education movements. Boal served one term as a Vereador (the Brazilian equivalent of a city councillor) in Rio de Janeiro from 1993 to 1997, where he developed legislative theatre.[1]

Imagining America: “The Imagining America consortium (IA) brings together scholars, artists, designers, humanists, and organizers to imagine, study, and enact a more just and liberatory ‘America’ and world. Working across institutional, disciplinary, and community divides, IA strengthens and promotes public scholarship, cultural organizing, and campus change that inspires collective imagination, knowledge-making, and civic action on pressing public issues.”

Public: “Public is a peer-reviewed, multimedia e-journal focused on humanities, arts, and design in public life. It aspires to connect what we can imagine with what we can do. We are interested in projects, pedagogies, resources, and ideas that reflect rich engagements among diverse participants, organizations, disciplines, and sectors.”

Meeting the Moment Socially Engaged Theater, 1965 To 2020: Jan Cohen-Cruz and Rad Pereira: Curated stories from over 75 interviews and informal exchanges offer insight into the field and point out limitations due to discrimination and unequal opportunity for performance artists in the United States over the past 55 years. In this work, performers, often unknown beyond their immediate audience, articulate diverse influences.

Open Theater: The Open Theater was an experimental theatre group active from 1963 to 1973.

Franz Kafka's The Trial: The Trial is a novel written by Franz Kafka between 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously on 26 April 1925. One of his best known works, it tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader.

Paris, May 1968 Strikes and Demonstrations: Beginning in May 1968, a period of civil unrest occurred throughout France, lasting some seven weeks and punctuated by demonstrations, general strikes, as well as the occupation of universities and factories. At the height of events, which have since become known as May 68, the economy of France came to a halt.[1]

The Devil and Daniel Webster:The Devil and Daniel Webster" (1936) is a short story by American writer Stephen Vincent Benét. He tells of a New Hampshire farmer who sells his soul to the devil and is later defended by Daniel Webster, a fictional version of the noted 19th-century American statesman, lawyer and orator.

Harvey Grossman: In this edited transcription of his remarks at the 2013 Pomona College (California) conference “Action, Scene and Voice,” Harvey Grossman elucidates the theory and practice of his two most important teachers: Edward Gordon Craig and Étienne Decroux. Grossman elucidates Craig’s much-debated comments on the “Art of the Theatre,” as well as Craig’s influence upon the French corporeal mime Étienne Decroux

Richard Levy, New York Street Theater: The New York Street Theatre Caravan (NYSTC), formerly the City Street Theater, was a New York City-based socialist theater collective. First conceived by Marketa Kimbrell and Richard Levy in 1967, the company was founded on the principle of bringing theater to underprivileged and geographically isolated communities. NYSTC performed plays, puppet shows, skits, and concerts with themes meaningful to their audiences, such as racial inequality, workers' rights, homelessness, and other sociopolitical issues.

Richard Schechner: Schechner was one of the founders of the Performance Studies department of the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He founded The Performance Group of New York in 1967 and was its artistic director until 1980, when TPG changed its name to The Wooster Group.

Liz Lerman:  Liz Lerman is a choreographer, performer, writer, teacher, and speaker. She has spent the past four decades making her artistic research personal, funny, intellectually vivid, and up to the minute. A key aspect of her artistry is opening her process to everyone from shipbuilders to physicists, construction workers to ballerinas, resulting in both research and experiences that are participatory, relevant, urgent, and usable by others

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar: Urban Bush Women: Urban Bush Women (UBW) galvanizes artists, activists, audiences and communities through performances, artist development, education and community engagement. With the ground-breaking performance ensemble at its core, and ongoing programs including the Summer Leadership Institute (SLI), BOLD (Builders, Organizers & Leaders through Dance) and the Choreographic Center Initiative, UBW affects the overall ecology of the arts by promoting artistic legacies; projecting the voices of the under-heard and people of color; bringing attention to and addressing issues of equity in the dance field and throughout the United States; and by providing platforms and serving as a conduit for culturally and socially relevant experimental art makers.

Kathi Bentley: Kathryn Bentley is an associate professor of theater performance, and artistic director of Southern Illinois University’s Black Theatre Workshop. A theater professional with extensive experience as an actor, director and teaching artist, she holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Theater Directing and professional training in community arts and social justice. She is a 2002 St. Louis Regional Arts Commission Community Arts Institute Fellow, and she now serves as a faculty member for the institute. She is a National Conference for Community and Justice St. Louis Certified Diversity Facilitrainer and a Certified Lessac Kinesensic Voice and Movement Practitioner. 

Love at the River’s Edge: A Shakespeare Festival St. Louis production that took place in both the streets of Pagedale, Missouri, and the farmland of Calhoun County, Illinois. Its remix of the classic play, titled “Love at the River’s Edge,” transports audience members across the Mississippi River to examine the urban and rural divide. 

Pam Korza: co-directs Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts, that inspires, informs, promotes, and connects arts and culture as potent contributors to community, civic, and social change. Animating Democracy’s current work centers on building evaluation capacity of practitioners, funders, and other stakeholders to understand the impact of arts-based civic engagement and social change. Her writing and editing includes: the framework, Aesthetic Perspectives: Attributes of Excellence in Arts for Change; the Continuum of Impact guide; a chapter in the book, Arts and Community Change (Routledge, 2015), and Critical Perspectives: Writings on Art & Civic Dialogue. 

A Blade of Grass: provides resources to artists who demonstrate artistic excellence and serve as innovative conduits for social change. We evaluate the quality of work in this evolving field by fostering an inclusive, practical discourse about the aesthetics, function, ethics and meaning of socially engaged art that resonates within and outside the contemporary art dialogue.

Animating Democracy: Animating Democracy’s current work centers on building evaluation capacity of practitioners, funders, and other stakeholders to understand the impact of arts-based civic engagement and social change.

Tom Finklepearl: is an American arts promoter, former museum director, and former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.[5] He was appointed in 2014 by the New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio,[5] and served through the end of 2019.[6]

New York Department of Cultural Affairs, Public Artists in Residence (PAIR) is a municipal residency program that embeds artists in city government to propose and implement creative solutions to pressing civic challenges. Launched in the fall of 2015, PAIR takes its inspiration and its name from the pioneering work of artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, the first official (unsalaried) artist-in-residence with the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY), 1977 – present.

Tania Bruguera: “Tania Bruguera was born in 1968 in Havana, Cuba.[1] she is and artist and activist who focused on installation and performance artist. She lives and works between New York and Havana, and has participated in numerous international exhibitions.[2] Her work is in the permanent collections of many institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and