As I learned at the symposium, Inheriting Genocide, and shared with you in the first installment, during the Armenian Genocide in 1915, infants and children were snatched from their mothers and given to Turkish, Kurdish, and Bedouin families. After the war, adult survivors in the Armenian diaspora and aid organizations …
“When a crime against humanity occurs, all of humanity is affected,” said Christie Tcharkhoutian, speaking at the symposium, Inheriting Genocide: Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma. In that spirit, I’ve tried to apply what I heard that day very broadly. Right now? I’ve just watched footage of still another school shooting. Children …
Much of what I heard at the Inheriting Genocide symposium resonated with my own experiences working at PTV with men and women seeking asylum in the United States after escaping prison, torture, and the threat of death in their countries of origin. What happens once you think you’re safe? The …
“When survivors first arrived,” said psychiatrist Andrei Novac, himself the child of Holocaust survivors, “they didn’t want to talk about it. When they did want to talk, therapists didn’t want to listen.” At the February symposium on Inheriting Genocide and the intergenerational transmission of trauma, he called this the Conspiracy …
Diane Leffer’s account of the Inheriting Genocide symposium will be published on the ImaginAction website in five parts every month. In 2015, Hector and I produced Second Chances, a play inspired by Theater of Witness techniques. Torture survivors portrayed themselves and their own stories onstage alongside family members of survivors—spouse, …
Lifeboats Type Activation You need Nothing Duration 10 min. The participants fill the space in silence, walking quickly. The joker says “Lifeboats of 4,” and the participants must form groups of four, interlacing their arms and excluding those who exceed the number four or searching for new people when …
Newspaper Theatre (NPT) was born as a theatrical manifesto by Arena Theater of Sao Paulo. With the 12 techniques of NPT, a group of actors and non-actors can collectively transform any non-dramatic text (Newspapers, documents, the bible, etc.) into a critical and empathic investigation of the social reality. Simple reading …