Culture, Genocide and the small matter of Theatre

A Public Lecture by Prof Erik Ehn

Prof Erik Ehn is Head of Playwriting, Theatre Arts and Performance Department, at Brown University. His artistic practice, as playwright, theatre director and teacher, is influenced and informed by the intersections of cultural development, the collapse of culture (which is genocide) and the responsibilities of contemporary theatre. It is an urgently compelling field that combines theatricality, cultural production and ethics. His play Maria Kizito was based on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and was the result of his research in that Central African country. He is also the founder of an annual conference called Arts in the One World, which brings together performing artists, scholars, and human rights activists to investigate theatre on the subject of genocide and reconciliation. The talk was followed by a dialogue with Noor Effendy Ibrahim, playwright, director and performer, and Paul Rae, Co-Artistic Director of spell#7 and lecturer in the Theatre Studies Programme, National University of Singapore. The dialogue was moderated by T. Sasitharan.