LINKAGES
LINKAGES
Divine Comedy
Theatre Festival
Kraków, Poland · December 2022
About our trip
LINKAGES: Poland was initiated in 2020 as a multi-year effort to create a new generation of artist-to-artist relationships between theatre makers in the US and Poland. Due to the pandemic, the first two years were conducted via zoom. In 2022, with the pandemic in retreat, we initiated the travel phase of the project, bringing six of our American cohort to the Divine Comedy Festival in Kraków, where they saw a range of productions and met with Polish cohort members and other artists and leaders. They were accompanied by Project Director Howard Shalwitz, Project Manager Brandice Thompson, Polish coordinator Margaret Semil, Nicole Garneau, and additional US theatre leaders. We were also joined by theatre critic Peter Marks of the Washington Post who reported on the trip through two in-depth articles. Shalwitz reported on the trip in HowlRound Theatre Commons.
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The Cohort
maria manuela goyanes
Artistic Director of DC’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, one of thenation’s most influential producers of innovative new plays. The theatre’s production of A STRANGELOOP won the 2022 Tony Award for Outstanding New Musical on Broadway. In her previous role at thePublic Theatre in New York, Maria was a producer for the international sensation, HAMILTON.
JENNIFER
KIDWELL
Actor and devising artist, and winner of an Obie Award for Best New American Theatre Work, Underground Railroad Game, which she both performed in and created. Jennifer performs regularly with the Wilma and Pig Iron Theater Companies in Philadelphia. She is also a teacher and co-founder of the performance space JACK in Brooklyn.
ronee
penoi
Director of artistic programming for Arts Emerson in Boston, one of the nation’s largest multi-venue presenters of American and international theatre. Previously, she was a producer for
Octopus Theatricals representing touring ensembles across the US, on Broadway, and overseas.
michael
rohd
Founding director of Sojourn Theatre in Portland, Oregon and founder of the Center for
Performance and Civic Practice, a national consulting practice. Author of the widely translated book,
“Theatre for Community, Conflict, and Dialogue,” he teaches at the University of Montana.
liesl
tommy
South African-American director whose work has been seen at major theatres across the
US. For directing the Broadway production of Eclipsed in 2017, she became the first woman of color to be nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play. She made her feature film directorial debut in 2021 with Respect, based on the life of Aretha Franklin and starring Jennifer Hudson.
Actor and devising artist, and winner of an Obie Award for Best New American Theatre Work, Underground Railroad Game, which she both performed in and created. Jennifer performs regularly with the Wilma and Pig Iron Theater Companies in Philadelphia. She is also a teacher and co-founder of the performance space JACK in Brooklyn.
travel photos
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