February 15th & 16th - Heather Raffo in Sounds of Desire
February 27th & March 1st - The Aperture by Sean Christopher Lewis
February 28th & March 2nd - Aziza by Damon Chua
February 29th & March 3rd - ¡STICK! by Irma Mayorga and Virginia Grise
February 29th - Teri 'Ajile' Axam: Dancer With A Message, 5pm*
March 4th - Student One-Acts and Dance Works
March 5th - Pizza and Politics

Production Supervisor - Matt Richards

*All events will take place on the Pavilion Theater stage at 8pm, barring Teri 'Ajile' Axam, which will be at 5pm on February 29th.

All are free and open to the public.

Welcome to a unique event called Cultural Conversations. This is the only event like it in the United States, and it takes a great many visionaries to make it happen. It takes artistic and administrative visionaries with the courage to act, but it also takes visionary audiences who have the courage to engage. The visionary artist can offer engagements with diversity, but it takes artists and audiences to bring the engagement into a physical form. The artist exists inside and outside the rules and regulations of society, and when an audience arrives to bare witness to an “outside” perspective, the future of a culture is not limited by rules and regulations. Artists bring the possible into a tangible form, and when the possible is tangible, the future becomes a conversation.

..........................................Welcome to the conversation.

Susan Russell, Artistic Director of Cultural Conversations...........

Friday February 15th & Saturday February 16th, 8pm
Heather Raffo ............Amir Elsaffar

Heather Raffo’s Sounds of Desire, described by The New Yorker as “an example of how art can remake the world”, details the lives of nine ordinary and extraordinary Iraqi women. Both mythical and contemporary, the women’s words weave in and out of the ancient quarter tone scales of Amir’s classical santoor.

This is the first full collaboration of the two artists. Amir and Heather met soon after the Iraq war began in 2003. Both children born of Iraqi and American parents, they naturally had a lot in common. Raised in the mid-west, both became artists with strong American influences. Yet the war would prove to be a pivotal point in their work. Both have large extended families still living in Baghdad, and their recent work reflects a vision of translating an Iraqi cultural experience for an American ear.

Amir has performed extensively as a Jazz and Classical trumpeter with esteemed artists such as Cecil Taylor, Vijay Iyer, and Daniel Barenboim. After a trip to Iraq in 2002, his focus shifted to the Iraqi santoor, a hammered dulcimer instrument, and the traditional music of Iraq known as the Maqam. He has now mastered a significant portion of the Maqam repertoire, and leads Safaafir, which is the only ensemble in the US performing the Iraqi Maqam. His newest work, called Two Rivers, brings Maqam melodic structures into a modern Jazz context.

Heather’s artistic career began as an actor. She has performed off Broadway, off West End, in regional theater and in film. In early 2001 she began work on Sounds of Desire. Heavily inspired by an earlier trip to see her family in Baghdad, research for Sounds of Desire took her deep into the Iraqi community both in and outside Iraq.

Sounds of Desire was first seen in Edinburgh at the Traverse Theater and later at the Bush Theater in London’s Off West End where critics hailed it one of the five best plays in London. It later was developed in conjunction with the Public Theater’s New Work Now Festival and opened Off Broadway at the Manhattan Ensemble Theater where it ran for nine sold-out months before beginning extended runs around the United States and internationally.

Stage Managers: Scott Andrews, Matt Richards, and Kat Manion

Thursday February 28th & Sunday March 2nd, 8pm

Damon Chua's play deals with the current unease between Islam and Christianity, informed by the history of the Moors as they battled the Catholic conquistadors in the late 15th century. The play floats between a violent past and a volatile present.

Damon Chua received the 2007 Ovation Award for Best World Premiere Play for his full-length play Film Chinois, beating six other nominees including Tony Award-winner David Henry Hwang. Film Chinois, a noir mystery-drama set in mid-Century Beijing against the backdrop of the ascendant Chairman Mao, received a world premiere in Los Angeles with Grove Theater Center and was described by The Los Angeles Times as “imaginative”, “admirable” and a “glossy invention”.

Damon’s other plays include award-winning Ash and Shadowless, Best Foot Forward, History of the Jade Chopsticks, The Buried, Trine, Neon Souls Cold Lights, and Imagine Sailendra. His pieces have been presented in Los Angeles, Boston, London and Singapore. He was also the winner of the 1st Asian-American Playwriting Competition organized by ACTS of Harvard University and holds a Fulbright nomination in Dramatic Arts. In addition, Damon served as dramaturge to NAACP Award-winning production of The Tower.

Damon recently completed a stint as Playwright-in-Residence at Long Beach’s Upper Reaches Theatre Company and currently heads up the Playwrights Group for Company of Angels, Los Angeles’ oldest non-profit theatre company.

Leila: Alexandra Wicker
Rahm: Derek Garza
Old Gypsy Woman: Nika Ericson
Cristo: Mark Schroeder
Abril/Aziza: Caroline Bowman
Director: Matthew Kaylor Toronto
Assistant Director: Molly Graham
Stage Manager: Hanna Oravec

Wednesday February 27th & Saturday March 1st, 8pm

The Aperture details the story of a child soldier in Uganda who is made to pose for pictures as such once he has escaped to America. The result is a new war in the United States, which is fought on many cultural battlefields. Directed by Dan Carter.

Sean Christopher Lewis is currently the National New Play Network Emerging Playwright in Residence at InterAct Theatre in Philadelphia. His plays include Militant Language (PlayPenn Conference, HotInk Festival, NNPN University Workshop), which will receive productions in 2008 at the Know Theatre of Cincinnati, and the Available Light, Bang and Clatter and Halcyon Theatre. I Will Make You Orphans (Uno Festival of Solo Performance, One Festival, Galapagos Art Space, Hyde Park Theatre, Riverside Theatre, Center for Independent Artists), Shatter the Sky (Orlando Shakespeare Festival PLAYFEST, Invictus TC, Working Group) and Handgrenade Holly (ArtSpark Festival, Hubris Productions). He has received the Norman Felton Fellowship in Playwriting and is currently working on a commission through Mural Arts Project of Philadelphia that has him creating a piece with prisoners at Graterford maximum security prison. The Aperture has been a finalist for the Princess Grace Prize and the Cherry Lane Mentorship. Sean is a proud graduate of the University of Iowa's MFA Playwrights Workshop.

The Aperture will appear, along with the musical Ordinary Days by Adam Gwon, at The York Theatre, NYC, on April 5th and April 6th, 2008 as part of Penn State at The York. This unique collaboration between a university and a professional theatre bridges a gap between training and practice as Penn State students are afforded the opportunity to work with professional writers, composers, and lyricists, and then perform on the stage of one of New York’s premiere Off Broadway theatres.

Alex: Anna Elwood
Okello John: Delius Doherty
Director: Dan Carter
Stage Manager: Lauren Williams

Friday February 29th, 5pm

1. "Ego Trippin & Strape/Black Mayflower" - poems by Nikki Giovanni & Dorothy Randall
choreography by Terrie 'Ajile' Axam, Traditional West African dance

2. "Grandma’s Hands" - live drum and song by Oginga Love

3. "Free My Soul" - music by Hugh Masekela

Terrie Ajile Axam is the Founder and Artistic Director of Total Dance/Dancical Productions, Inc. of Atlanta, GA. Over the span of her career Ms. Axam has taught, performed, and toured nationally and internationally. From 1994-1995, she was a vocalist and choreographer for the world renowned and socially conscious Hip Hop and R&B group Arrested Development. A featured performance at the inauguration of Nelson Mandela in South Africa is among the highlights of that tour.

In addition to Arrested Development, Ms. Axam has performed with Millie Jackson, Peabo Bryson, Avery Brooks, and playwright Don Evans. She was lead vocalist for Alex Haley’s research production of Roots at Barnard College and she has worked with Jomandi Productions, Just Us Theater, and New Breed Production Company. Ms. Axam’s original dance technique, Mojah, was featured on a CNN special and she has taught this unique dance style in Kalani Honua, Hawaii, Kingston, Jamaica, and Senegal, West Africa.

Axam’s other credits include her creation of two signature productions, “Women Hold Up Half the Sky- A Tribute to the African American Woman”, and “Fusion- From Africa to Hip Hop”. Axam earned her BA from Princeton University and an MA from Rutgers University.
Stage Managers: Matt Richards and Kat Manion

Friday February 29th & Monday March 3rd, 8pm

This performance piece exposes the "education" of Mexicans in Texas. This education process is literal, cultural, and demonstrative with devastating results for the past, present, and possible future. This piece comes to the festival as a work-in-progress, and will be performed as a staged reading.

Irma Mayorga is an artist/scholar/activista in theater and an Assistant Professor in Theatre Studies at Florida State University. Daughter of a career Army father and San Antonio born mother, she spent her childhood traveling around the country with San Antonio serving as her family’s home locus. She holds a B.A. in Theater Arts from the College of St. Benedict, an M.F.A. in Costume Design from UW-Madison, and a Joint Ph.D. in Drama and the Humanities from Stanford University. In addition to her academic career, Irma has served as a cultural worker for New WORLD Theater (MA), the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center (TX), and the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (TX). As a playwright, she has earned the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award and went on to receive an invitation for participation to the prestigious Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s Playwrights Conference. She was the first Chicana playwright to receive invitation to develop and present work at the O’Neill Conference. With collaborator Virginia Grise, she developed, wrote, and staged The Panza Monologues, which toured the U.S. with high acclaim and was published in 2004 by Evelyn Street Press. She is also a dramaturge and curator and holds a “highly certified” teaching license as a public school educator in Special Education for the state of Texas.

Virginia Grise is a Chicana cultural worker - installation artist, writer, performer, and teacher who has facilitated organizing efforts amongst women, immigrant, incarcerated, working class, Chicano, and queer youth. She is an MFA student in the Writing for Performance program at the California Institute of Arts, under the mentorship of Carl Hancock Rux. Virginia currently teaches theatre and writing classes to high school and junior high school students in the Eastside of Los Angeles through the Community Arts Partnership.
Actor 1: Patrese McClain
Actor 2: Leila Crestani
Actor 3: Ireida Santiago
Actor 4: Deanna Ybarra
Actor 5: Jamila Sabares-Klemm
Actor 6: Mike Viola
Actor 7: Gilbert Bailey
Director: Charles Dumas
Stage Manager: Kat Manion

Student One Acts and Student Dance Pieces
Tuesday March 4th, 8pm

One-Acts

Past Fairfax
By Ross Harris
Directed by Richard Biever

Eliot......Brandon McMillen
Roman....Derek Biddle
Pizza Guy.....Alan Wiggins

Six Degrees of Orientation
By Michael Viola
Directed by Sara Tode

Matt: Derek Biddle
Lynn: Jessica Lynne Byars
Natalie: Rebecca Sussman
Dianna: Mariel Kate Iezzoni
Tyler: Christopher Young
Kyle: Jeremy Greenbaum

Student Dance

Bhangra - Performed by Members of P-Side
Break Dance Selections - Performed by Members of RAM Squad
Esma Yalli - Performed by Members of Belly Dance Club
Drum Solo - Performed by Members of Belly Dance Club
Urban Dance Troupe

Pizza & Politics
Wednesday March 5th, 8pm

"The state of the state, and who should be in charge."

An evening of political debate between local representatives of various political parties, their student counterparts, and the visionaries that attend.

Pizza and soft drinks provided.
Remarks by Matthew Richards and Kat Manion

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Cultural Conversations is funded by the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, the Weiss Fund, The College of Arts and Architecture Diversity Committee, The Arts and Architecture Department of Faculty Research and Development, The College of Arts and Architecture, and The Penn State School of Theatre. Terri Axam appears thanks to an IAH Distinguished Visiting Professor Award.

Cultural Conversations is supported by The School of Theatre Diversity Committee: Elisha Clark: Convener, C. Patrick Tyndall, Steve Broadnax, Michele Dunleavy, and Susan Russell.