As Artists and Educators in Theatre, Dance, and Performance we
unequivocally condemn the historically rooted and pervasive
racist murders of African Americans and other people of color by
police in the United States and globally. We acknowledge these
most recent examples are not unique. We acknowledge this plague
is systemic and extends beyond the police. We cannot function as
a society, nor as a learning institution, in a context where
people of color cannot walk, jog, drive, talk, or even sleep in
their homes safely without fear of being murdered by the state.
We certainly cannot teach our craft, which is by its very nature
a living and breathing engagement with all people, without
denouncing this violence, and the hateful rhetoric that fuels it.
Professor Larry Bogad, Department of Theatre and Dance chair, has
been recognized by the U.S. Department of Arts
and Culture as one of the 25 creative practitioners who will
deepen and support the building of our People’s WPA platform.
Prior to the recent presidential election, Professor Larry Bogad,
Department of Theatre and Dance chair, spent the fall
spearheading the creation of Delivering Democracy, a cohort
of dancing mailboxes first deployed in Pennsylvania in order to
encourage voting by mail. His efforts along with those of other
arts activists are the focus of “The People’s WPA Isn’t Waiting
Around for a Future ‘New Deal’” featured on the KQED
website.
Graduate student Jennifer Grace is among the actors, who have
played the iconic role of Emily Webb in Thornton Wilder’s “Our
Town,” interviewed in a New York Times article.
The Department of Theatre and Dance will host a talk with
University of Pennsylvania Professor Jennifer Ponce de Leon
on the topic Another Aesthetics is Possible: Arts of
Rebellion in the Fourth World War. The event
is March 2 at 1:10 p.m. and is free and open to
all.
A multisensory performance piece, FOOD offers up a
dreamscape cooking show that promises to sate, disgust, amuse and
amaze even the most discerning of appetites.
The UC Davis Department of Theatre and Dance production is
co-devised and directed by Geoff Sobelle, Granada
Artist-in-Residence. The free performance livestreams on
March 4, 5 and 6 at 7 p.m. PST.
A Shakespearean tragedy gets a contemporary musical comedy
makeover when the UC Davis Department of Theatre and Dance
and Catalyst: A Theatre Think Tank (C3T) present “Juliet and
Romeo” in a free virtual production June 3-5 at 6 p.m.
“Juliet and Romeo” is developed in special collaboration with
Southern Utah University’s Department of Theatre, Dance and
Arts Administration with support from the Robert and Margrit
Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts and the Jan Shrem and
Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art.
