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Peacebuilding Through Awareness & Improvisation, Part 1

Friday, March 12, 2021 at 10:30am EST
Click here to register

Social Presencing Theater (SPT) decolonizes learning by reclaiming the body as an equitable way of knowing and being. SPT centers first-person experience via an improvisational and cyclical process, inviting participants to perceive a larger present. Because SPT is practiced in community, it positions our relational spaces, and the distinct cultures that emerge from them, as worthy of reflection and development. The “theater” in SPT refers to a shared place where something of significance is made visible.

The first virtual event is a webinar, co-presented with Queensborough Community College’s Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center (KHC). Facilitators will guide awareness and listening practices that may be enacted in a chair and with limited space. Attendees will learn about a workshop on “empathy to action,” which CUNY students developed in partnership with the KHC last year. Facilitators will also share about their experiences integrating SPT in local and global contexts, reflecting on the potential of SPT to transform intransigent problems. The second event invites attendees to immerse in the practices of Social Presencing Theater. (Click here to register for the Part 2 scheduled on April 24, 2021 at 10:30 am EST.)

Facilitators include members of QCC’s student and alumni practice group, including Jessica Kreisler and Yineng Ye, Global Citizenship Alliance alumni; Arawana Hayashi, creator of Social Presencing Theater; Uri Noy Meir, an artist-facilitator co-creating social art across borders; Manish Srivastava, a global facilitator whose projects include partnering with UN agencies and NGO sectors; and CUNY Faculty members: Heather Huggins, advanced practitioner of SPT and Assistant Professor of Theatre, and Aviva Geismar, Associate Professor of Dance. 

This event is co-sponsored by Transformative Learning in the Humanities at the City University of New York (CUNY); the Harriet & Kenneth Kupferberg Holocaust Center; the CUNY-QCC Mindfulness Club and Office of Student Activities‘ “Thrive Series” and the CUNY-QCC Visual and Performing Arts Academy.