International Premiere of Documentary Film!

Dear Friends,

2014 has been an incredibly busy year so far. We’ve just been invited to premiere our recently completed documentary film on the Truth in Translation project at the Durban International Film Festival in South Africa, which will also celebrate the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s election to the South African presidency. In order to differentiate the film from the theatre production, the documentary has been titled A Snake Gives Birth to a Snake. We will be in touch via our newsletter in the coming weeks with more information on the exact times and locations of the screenings. Until then, you can read more about the festival here.

In February, we made our second trip to work with the Phare Circus artists in Battambang, Cambodia in order to cast and continue development on our joint theatre/circus project. Andrew Buckland from our South African cast joined Michael and me for a second time as a trainer, along with Arben Bajraktaraj from Kosovo/France and Robbie Koen, also from South Africa. Arn Chorn Pond, former Khmer Rouge child soldier and founder of Cambodian Living Arts, also joined us to tell the young performers his story as part of the history we will bring into the show. A new short film on this recent work will be on our website in August, and we’ve already begun preparations to return to Battambang in February 2015.

In May we were honored to be commissioned by the European Foundation Centre and the Robert Bosch Stiftung to make a 10-min film on our work for presentation at the Annual General Assembly of the European Foundation Centre in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The film, which you can watch here, provides a good update on our recent activities and ongoing projects.

We are back in the US with a lot of work ahead of us. Fortunately, we will be working with four young college and graduate student fellows over the next few months. Hallie Sekoff, one of our summer fellows, wrote a reflection on Never Fall Down that we featured in our last newsletter. If you missed it then, you can read it here now.
Please watch out for more updates on the premiere of the film and our summer fellowship in the coming months.

– Jacqueline Lessac