Operating Support
ACHF Arts Access
Provide significant opportunities for artists from diverse backgrounds to create new work and present it to the larger community. Create at least two productions of original work created by diverse artists in each fiscal year. Present at least one national or international artist of color, and commission or present at least one local or national indigenous artist to audiences in Minneapolis and St Paul. Evaluations were quantitative and qualitative; they were participatory including surveys, feedback, and narrative evaluation. Both plays were attended by diverse audiences. Hmong Bollywood included eighteen flash mob dancers and worked with local Hmong community organizations in St Paul, bringing in a large Hmong audience to see the performance. There was a smaller population of South Asian Indians because of the content of the play. One audience member said, The show was tremendously well done. Not enough attention is paid to immigrant/refugee men. It was amazing how I saw my life reflected in a story you think would be dissimilar to my own. 2: Cultivate the cultural vitality of local immigrant communities through artistic and community based programming. Commission and produce plays and performances by two new artists from immigrant communities through our Alternate Visions series, and actively market this to develop a more diverse audience. Foster dialogue and create large-scale performance events with the immigrant community on Lake Street as part of our Hyphe-Nations: Immigration Matters series. Pangea evaluated its progress through the constituencies we serve: diverse and immigrant audiences, participating artists, community activists, peacemakers, human rights workers, scholars, workshop participants, and immigrant community leaders, in cooperation with Pangea staff. In the process of internal and external evaluations we: 1) used qualitative measures to assess the positive impact of the diverse working environment on artists and technical staff. 2) Used artists, our audiences, and our board to evaluate productions. The information collected is being used to improve internal processes of the theater. 3) Kept records of the ethnic make-up of our audience garnered through surveys asking for detailed demographic information. Demographic information about audiences helped us directly target the diverse audiences we serve.
Pangea presented Morphologies: A Global Queer Arts Festival, a first ever collaboration. Pangea productions Hmong Bollywood and Lorca in a Green Dress challenged perceptions and brought multiple communities together at the intersection of art and human rights. Hmong Bollywood was a one-woman show, written and performed by 1.5 generation Hmong American Katie Ka Vang. The play depicts her experiences of American struggle, painful memories, fear, and cancer as she escapes into the fantastical world of Bollywood. The performance blended creative non-fiction, broken prose, monologues, video installation, media art, Bollywood dance numbers, and choreography. The production team was incredibly talented and diverse, and led by director Meena Natarajan. Our annual collaboration with Teatro Del Pueblo was Lorca in a Green Dress by Pulitzer prize winning playwright, Nilo Cruz. The play took place in 1936 Spain, in a time of civil war and a climate of intolerance. The play had a diverse cast with three Latino actors and was performed at the Ritz Theater. 2: In the 2013 Alternate Visions Series we commissioned new playwrights Al Justinano, Marisa Carr, and Ismail Khalidi. We have also been working with Anton Jones' multi genre piece Med/i/a and Masanari Kawahara's Hiroshima in workshops and will premier both of those plays in 2014. Our Hyphe-NATIONS: Immigrants Matter program culminated in a performance and celebration of our community-based theater program that addressed issues facing the Latina/o immigrant community of the Twin Cities. Performed in bilingual Spanish to English with interpretation support, the performance was called PersonA HumanA: A bilingual historia, and was the result of gatherings and stories-shared for over a year. We trained and developed a company of eight Latino/a community actors and performed in simultaneous translation.
Other
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