SEGAL TALK on November 17 to be Conversation with Basil Jones (South Africa) about THE WALK

A giant puppet of a nine-year-old refugee girl Amal traveled 4,971 miles (8,000km) from the Turkey-Syria border through Europe to the UK. The Good Chance team behind The Jungle, the celebrated dramatisation of refugee life in Calais, teamed up with the creators of the War Horse puppets to create one of the most ambitious public artworks ever attempted.

The Walk dramatised the stories of refugee children by means of a 3.5-metre-high puppet, Little Amal, who traveled from the Syrian border through Turkey, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and France in search of her mother. More than 70 towns, villages and cities welcomed Little Amal with art, from major street parties and city performances to more intimate community events. Even the Pope welcomed her.

a??In July, Little Amal arrived at the Manchester International Festival where she became the centerpiece of a large-scale participatory event. The production team includes the director Stephen Daldry, who said it would be a "travelling festival of art and hope" and the "most ambitious public art event" ever attempted.

They ask with the New York Times: "Four Months, 5,000 Miles ... In a politically divided continent, were any minds changed?a??" Read the article here.

Basil Jones is the co-founder and Executive Producer of Handspring Puppet Company. Jones completed his BFA at UCT where he met future husband, Adrian Kohler. In 1990, Jones set up a not for profit NGO Handspring Trust, which produced the award winning Spider's Place, an innovative, multi-media science education series for TV, radio and comic aimed at young learners from disadvantaged backgrounds. He set up the Handspring Awards for Puppetry, which recognise and encourage puppet design, direction and performance in South Africa. The Handspring Trust is involved in a number of projects in urban township and rural areas, using puppetry as a means to educate and empower youth and bring communities together through street parades and performance. He speaks and writes on the subject of puppetry and is deeply interested in growing an international dialogue on the theatre of objects. He received the Naledi Executive Directors Award [2012], a lifetime achievement award from Tshwane University [2006] and an honorary doctorate in literature from UCT [2012].

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center is proud to continue its new global series, Segal Talks. Since March 2020 the series featured over 150 talks with 150 artists from 50 countries. New York, US, and international theatre artists, curators, researchers, and academics will talk daily during the week for one hour with Segal Center's director, Frank Hentschker, about life and art in the Time of Corona and speak about challenges, sorrows, and hopes for the new Weltzustand- the State of the World. Segal Talks will continue to focus on Theatre, Performance and The Political, the Segal Center's 2023 New York International Festival of the Arts Project and the Center's Public Park Project. During the pandemic The Segal Center was for a long period globally the only theatre institution creating new, original, daily content for the global field of theater and performance five days a week.

Segal Talks are free, open access, without ads, and will be live-streamed in English from Wednesday to Friday on HowlRound Theatre Commons and on the Segal Center Facebook. This program is presented in collaboration with HowlRound Theatre Commons, based at Emerson College. All Segal Talks are archived on HowlRound, and on the Segal Center YouTube Channel.