WORD from the Artistic Director

With hope, joyfulness, and appropriate care, we enter into this historic moment. We have done something truly remarkable. It is a time of celebration, and a time for important decisions.

As the world celebrates the first president of the United States who is a person of color, New WORLD Theater will be celebrating our 30th Anniversary of serving artists and audiences of color. As the demographics of our nation shift, it is more important than ever that leadership, in politics as well as in our cultural lives, be increasingly representative of the people. In this age of hope and challenge, New WORLD Theater's commitment to cultural equity and innovation is more important than ever.

Beginning in Spring 2009, we are taking the time to reflect on how far we've come, and making thoughtful decisions about where we're headed in the coming years. We had a sweet beginning to our season with sash & trim, written by Djola Branner and directed by Laurie Carlos. In October, we continued our series of public forums on the crisis in Somalia, as we prepare for our unique production of Shekadii Walaalo!Sister-Story in November, in collaboration with the Walaalo! Somali Sisters Collective (read more about that below). And we're already preparing for our Spring production of The Best of 2050! with the launch of a brand-new 2050 Alum program (contact Nicole for details)!

As we move into an inspiring future, with all its challenges, your participation and support of New WORLD Theater are more important than ever. While the world is changing - for the better, we hope - it demands new ways of doing things. New ideas, new strategies for making them reality, and new approaches to creating work that matters. In conjunction with our 30th Anniversary, we're working toward building financial reserves that will sustain our mission through challenging times and exciting periods of growth. To achieve that, we're turning to the grassroots, the source of our strength and inspiration. Please join us, as we build the future together.

In Peace & Solidarity,

Andrea Assaf
Artistic Director

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Shekadii Walaalo! A Community Experience By Ayaan Agane, Dramaturgy Intern As the leaves change, the members of the Walaalo! Somali Sisters Collective prepare for their performance, Shekadii Walaalo!Sister-Story, supported by New WORLD Theater. The performance serves as the culminating event of a community-based project that aims to sustain and celebrate Somali culture in the Pioneer Valley. The current situation in Somalia is widely recognized as the greatest humanitarian crisis in Africa and in the world. Without a central government since 1991, Somalia has endured political violence that has displaced over a million Somalis within their country and dispersed more than 450,000 refugees worldwide. Shekadii Walaalo! confronts the experiences of Somali men and women now living in the U.S. The production, presented in both English and Somali, results from a series of workshops and interviews with the members of the collective. Combining poetry, live music, dance, storytelling and video, the production details the journey of Somalis from a war-torn home to Massachusetts. Recently, I sat down with the Walaalo! Somali Sisters Collective, along with New WORLD's Artistic Director Andrea Assaf and guest artist Potri Ranka Manis, to discuss the production. For those working on the project, sharing stories of war and displacement has served as a constant reminder of their experiences back home. "We all feel homesick. We hear each story and we all get sad," remarks Sitey, a member of the Walaalo! collective. Bilan, another member, adds, "Every Ramadan, we feel like it would be nice if we were back home fasting with others." During Ramadan in Somalia, Nimco remarks, "People used to come and they sang songs. They woke you up with the songs. There's nothing like that here." The memory is enough to inspire the group to sing, temporarily putting the interview on hold. But the creative process has not been entirely one of nostalgia. Participating in the collective's first theatrical production has produced benefits that go beyond the artistic process. "It helps us to relieve the stress you have when you are alone," explains Nasra Ali, one of the project's organizers. "Because you have that space when you feel like, OK, it's not only me who's going through this hardship. It's not only me going through this sadness. Bola's story may be my story. Hawo's story will be my story. Living through those hardships, sharing that, helps tremendously." Bilan adds, "You open up." If you don't, "you will talk to yourself until you lose your own sanity." The Walaalo! collective wants not only to share these experiences with each other, but to spread awareness beyond their own community. Nasra explains, "We want people all over the world to come. We want our story to be heard." Fadumo interposes, "When people see us, they think we are crazy, that we have mental health issues. They don't know what we went through, the trauma we went through. We want them to see what we're thinking ... that we are not crazy." Cultural awareness accompanies this petition for understanding. Bilan wants to educate the Springfield community about the Somali Muslim culture. "How we dress, that is our culture. We're not terrorists. People driving by look at you and say, 'Does she have a bomb?'" The group intends to use the performance to engage Somalis not involved in the production. Nasra wants the community to gain feelings of solidarity from the performance. "We're not only talking about us. [We want the Somalis to know] that we are talking and advocating for the Somalis overall as a nation, and that we are striving hard for success in this project - for our stories to be heard. That we are all one and we are not here to be divided. That we all are one community." Community is one of the most valuable results of this project. The Walaalo! Somali Sisters Collective has created a space for Somalis to exchange their experiences and celebrate their culture without the confines of tribalism or cultural inequity. Shekadii Walaalo! Sister-Story will be performed in Bowker Auditorium at UMass on November 22 nd at 7 pm. Call 413-545-2511 or visit www.umass.edu/fac to order tickets. BACK TO TOP

Between the Lines: An Interview with Djola Branner
By Priscilla Page, Program Curator

In September, New WORLD collaborated with the Department of Theater at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to present our fourth annual Community Spirit Showcase. This year our showcase featured Djola Branner. He is the newest member of the theater faculty at Hampshire College and one of the founding members of the acclaimed performance troupe Pomo Afro Homos. sash & trim, his latest creative endeavor, is an ensemble piece that Branner wrote and in which he performs one of the central roles. NWT was pleased to support the development of this new play with an early reading in June and a workshop presentation this fall. We also had the honor of bringing seminal theater artist Laurie Carlos in for an extended Five College residency to direct this presentation. Hampshire College students Terell Carl Richardson and David Donnella and local artists Irene Thornton and L'Kuicha Parks, director of Jelupa Productions, rounded out the cast.

Recently, New WORLD's Program Curator, Priscilla Page spoke with Djola Branner about sash & trim and his creative process.

Can you talk about the decision to write this piece, and your use of autobiography throughout your career as a writer and performer?

Initially, I intended sash & trim to be a companion piece to sweet sadie, a
one-man show I wrote about my mother and performed over a decade ago. I had been looking for some venue to explore my relationship with my father, and to showcase the incredible legacy of his music. Like so many fathers, he was torn in ten different directions at once - but the biggest tension in his life seems to have been his sense of obligation and his desire to lose himself in his art. That tension is something I believe was passed on to me ... for a very long time at least. The surprising thing, once I starting writing, was that Sadie had more to say, and that Anne [my father's second wife] had things to say as well, and that this was not going to be a solo show. Well.

Hopefully, what I've crafted is a play that explores the reconciliation of my father's tensions within myself, despite the fact that he was never able to resolve them within himself.

What is your approach to theater-making and performance?

I start with an idea, and use music, movement and text to develop that idea. Writing drama has always been that way for me. Because I started as a poet and a dancer, I've never been able to write a play solely with text. One of the reasons Laurie Carlos was so right for this piece was because she integrates breath, gesture and music in the language of any theatrical work.

What brought about your decision to pursue theater?

One of the most compelling reasons I became a theater artist was because I wanted to see reflections of myself on stage. Every once in a while there were images of black women and black men, but these were rarely the men and women I had encountered in my life. And there were never black gay men unless they were clowns or caretakers or con men. Thankfully, Brian Freeman, co-founder of Pomo Afro Homos, had the audacity to suggest that he, Eric Gupton and I script our own stories and stage them. So storytelling has been about affirming my own experience, about witnessing the experience of people whom I admire and draw strength from - people who have historically been absent from the stage. It is also about deconstructing and re-appropriating my own image.

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In this Issue: • Shekadii Walaalo! • Project 2050's Awesome Summer Adventure • Archiving Our History: A 30-Year Retrospective • A sneak peek at Ameriville • Between The Lines: Djola Branner • Notes On People

Fill in the Blank: How to make a difference with New WORLD Theater By Nicole M. Young In these challenging times, we know that every dollar matters. When you contribute to NWT, every dollar makes a difference for our community-based programs. Your financial contribution has a direct, positive impact on our community and the work we do here. You can help a young artist attend a Project 2050 Summer Intensive; provide tickets for local youth groups, community organizations and others who may not have the opportunity to attend live theater; and help sustain the voices of local artists. For our 2008-09 season, we've set a goal to raise $35,000 by June 30, 2009, to directly support Project 2050, our nationally acclaimed youth program. Last summer, we launched NWT's first individual giving campaign. . We know that with the support of our community, we will achieve our goals. Please consider making a personally significant contribution today. All contributions are tax-deductible and you will be eligible for a range of special benefits as our way of saying "Thank you" for your generous gift. As we celebrate our 30th Anniversary and work to sustain NWT for the next 30 years - and beyond! - we hope you'll be part of building the future with us. You can now make a secure contribution online! Visit the UMass Fine Arts Center website (www.umass.edu/fac ). Click on the "Donate" option on the left of the page, then access the secure donation page by clicking "here." At the "Make a Gift Online" page, please make sure to select "Fine Arts Center" as the first gift allocation and then select "New WORLD Theater" as the second gift allocation. As always, I love hearing from you. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at (413) 545-9591 or nmyoung@acad.umass.edu.

Project 2050's Awesome Summer Adventure
By Amina Jordan-Mendez and Anthony Wilson, 2050 Youth Coordinators

This past summer, Project 2050 embarked on a brand new journey. In place of our annual Summer Intensive, 21 members of Project 2050 took a few road trips in July and August. Some of us traveled to Brave New Voices, the National Poetry Slam hosted by YouthSpeaks in Washington D.C.; others attended the Alternate ROOTS annual meeting in North Carolina; another group participated in a collaborative project with Creative Forces and several other youth organizations in New Orleans.



Going on these trips greatly affected all of the youth and we would like to continue to make yearly trips to different parts of the U.S. These experiences allowed our minds to expand. Each of us has gained a better sense of what it means to be a youth activist and performer. Through our connections with young people in different parts of our nation, we have been reminded that we are not alone in the fight for justice and equality.

From these trips, we have a whole new vision for Project 2050. The ideas that emerged included putting more emphasis on movement and body language in poetry performance, which we saw at Brave New Voices, and broadening the range of creative activities which Creative Forces modeled–for example using skits and theater games to act out ideas and emotions. We would also love to host our own conferences and arts exchanges with youth groups across the country. We hope to share the hospitality that we received. It was an inspiration to experience the overwhelming sense of community in so many different regions and we want to develop this further in New England.

At Brave New Voices in D.C., we judged the quarter-finals for the poetry slam and learned that content is only one component to consider when evaluating the quality of poetry. We saw some performers who sounded like everyone else and we appreciated those who were creative, inventive and original. We learned a great deal about our own performance styles and delivery through this experience.

Project 2050 members led a theater workshop for younger participants and peers at the Alternate ROOTS conference in North Carolina. They also participated in creative studios, business meetings and late-night open mics. Here's what some of the 2050 youth had to say about the experience: Rathana:"The artistic energy I absorbed from all the various artists there opened my eyes again to the power of real art." Jessica:"I learned so much from the business meetings. It gave me insight into what my future is going to look like, in the field I want to go into." Efrain: "I felt like I had lost something, and I found it again."

The New Orleans trip filled us with new and rejuvenating experiences and led us to new views of the world and the work that truly needs to be done today. Throughout the week, the 2050 group visited several schools and youth groups. On the second day of the trip, we visited Creative Forces, an education-through-the-arts afterschool program at the New Orleans Math and Science Charter High School that empowers youth to use the tools and knowledge taught to them to teach younger students in a more interactive and fun way that challenges traditional teaching. We also visited the 9th Ward, the most damaged part of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. To round out our exchange, we led a two-hour workshop at the Ashe Cultural Center for Creative Forces participants and other youth. It was a hands-on demonstration of the kinds of artistry that are included in the 2050 program - dancing (breaking, stepping, ciphering and salsa!), beatboxing, singing, poetry writing and performance.

On all these trips, we felt humbled by the artists and activists we met and equally proud of the work we were able to share in different settings. We felt a deep sense of community in different places, and this is something we hope to develop more at Project 2050.

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Amina Jordan, Project 2050 Youth Coordinator, is a 16-year-old Amherst Regional High School student in her junior year. She is excited to be working in the New WORLD Theater office. Her experience as a 2050 youth and peer leader has shaped her commitment to youth activism. She is a poet who has been performing since she was 11 years old.

Nadine Mazard, Interim Managing Director, joined the New WORLD Theater staff this October. She has extensive financial experience at UMass, and she is the proud parent of Hurston St. Claire Leon Mazard Wallace. She received her undergraduate business degree in Accounting with a minor in Criminal Justice from California State University-Fullerton and is a Certified Public Accountant. She is also an attorney with her own law practice in Amherst. She is an active member of the community and loves to host parties and travel.

Anthony O. Wilson, Project 2050 Youth Coordinator, is a 17-year-old senior at Amherst Regional High School. He is deeply involved in the arts and activism and loves his life! Currently, Anthony is a Project 2050 participant, HIPP trainer and a peer leader of Video Vanguards. Dance is a huge part of his life and he is trained in many genres. Anthony also enjoys doing various forms of performance art. He is passionate about activism and believes that youth have powerful voices that can make a difference in the world.

If you are a member of the NWT community and have exciting news to share, please e-mail Nicole Young at nmyoung@acad.umass.edu or call her at 413.545.9591. Please include your affiliation and your contact information and we'll share your updates in an upcoming e-newsletter!

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Archiving Our History - A 30-Year Retrospective

As NWT turns 30 next year, the celebrations will include inauguration of the New WORLD Theater Organizational History Archive at the W.E.B. Du Bois Library at UMass. The archive, housed in the library's Special Collections, documents three decades of innovative arts practice and original productions, including performance programs, original scripts, publicity materials and writings about our programming and aesthetics.

The Organizational Archive will join the Asian American Women Playwrights Archive, which was inaugurated in 1993 by NWT's founding Artistic Director, Roberta Uno. Both archives are housed alongside many significant collections that include the complete W.E.B. Du Bois papers and the Broadside Press collection, a major publication of the Black Arts Movement. Situating the NWT Archive in this library puts the creative work of artists of color at the center of U.S. performing arts and cultural history in a significant and unprecedented way. With support and guidance from University archivist Tonia Sutherland, Priscilla Page and a team of student interns took up the task of cataloging 30 years of material in Summer 2007.

We are pleased to announce that we will kick off our 30 th Anniversary celebrations by launching a major retrospective exhibit of NWT's work from 1979 to the present. This exhibit will be on display in the Learning Commons from January through March. We are planning a reception in February to coincide with the retrospective. Check our website, www.newworldtheater.org, for more details.


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A Sneak Peek at Ameriville
By Chris Rohmann, Grants Coordinator

Next Spring, New WORLD Theater will present Ameriville, the newest work by Universes. NWT audiences got an early look at the work-in-progress in August, at the end of a developmental residency by the celebrated hip-hop theater ensemble. The writer-performers of Universes, together with eminent director and playwright Chay Yew, spent a week with us developing new material for Ameriville , which looks at the post-9/11 United States through the prism of post-Katrina New Orleans.

The residency continued NWT's longtime relationship with Universes and its members. Co-founders Steven Sapp and Mildred Ruiz are founding faculty members of Project 2050 and former NWT Artistic Associates. We participated in the development of Universes' acclaimed ensemble performance Slanguage, and helped to nurture Sapp and Ruiz's jazz-based piece Blue Suite in its early form as Eyewitness Blues.

The latest piece takes the form of character monologues performed by the four members of Universes–Sapp, Ruiz, Gamal Abdel Chasten and Ninja - punctuated with song and rhythm. The characters are New Orleanians whose lives were devastated by the hurricane - houses destroyed, livelihoods gone, struggling to stay afloat by hook or, in some cases, crook. But they also reflect a cross-section of the broader American public in a time of fear, uncertainty and growing anger.

The residency concluded with a reading of the work-in-progress for an invited audience at the UMass Department of Theater, followed by a post-show discussion facilitated by NWT's Program Curator and theater department faculty member, Priscilla Page. In response to questions, Gamal Chasten explained that the piece was originally titled War of the Worlds–a reference to the 1939 Orson Welles radio drama, which created the impression of an alien invasion through a series of news flashes and provoked a nationwide panic. That parallel to the terror-threat mindset in the wake of the 9/11 attacks eventually shifted to focus on New Orleans as a microcosm of the nation - first assaulted by an external force, then brutalized by a deceitful government. Mildred Ruiz added that in developing the piece, they've worked with the I-10 Witness Project, a community-based collective that documents the personal stories emerging in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The group used some of those narratives as a jumping-off place, "as well as voices from all over, plus our personal voice, and using all that to try to inspire a moment."

Ameriville will be presented in New WORLD's spring season, on April 30 and May 1, 2009, in Bowker Auditorium at UMass. Look for more information coming soon!

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