The Basra Boston Project Presents: BASRA BOSTON CONNECTIONS
By: Rebecca Russo Oct. 24, 2016
Basra-Boston Connections: An Iraq-U.S. Collaboration in Theater, Poetry, Art, Music, and Archaeology. Performance and Exhibit: Friday, November 4, 8 pm, Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Avenue, Somerville. Exhibit Only: October 7-30 at Midway Studios, 15 Channel Center Street, Boston. For more information: http://nervegarden.com/Basra-Boston/public-presentations/ or call 617-750-8900. Free. Reservations optional: http://www.fortpointtheatrechannel.org/tickets-shows/
On Friday, November 4, the Basra-Boston Project presents Basra-Boston Connections: An Iraq-U.S. Collaboration in Theater, Poetry, Art, Music, and Archaeology. This free evening of new work offers the fruits of connections among artists and scholars at the University of Basra and their U.S. counterparts, principally in the Boston area.
The Basra-Boston Project began in 2015 with facilitated online dialogue within pairs of scholars and artists in Boston and Basra: two archaeologists, two musicians-composers, and two visual artists. Playwrights and poets engaged with each pair. The participants have now created works for the public, with exhibits, presentations, and dramatic and poetry readings scheduled for Boston and Basra.
In a special dual-nation presentation, the events will include a video from Iraq of "Panorama Joy," composed for the project by Qays Owda Qasim. Following the video, Boston musician Jorrit Dijkstra will improvise around Qasim's composition.
Works to be presented also include workshop performances of two plays written for the project:Brides Look Forward by Johnny E. Meyer, a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and In the Reeds by Amy Merrill, one of the project coordinators.
Amir Al-Azraki, a Canadian-Iraqi playwright who is one of the project coordinators, will read and talk about the poetry and accompanying art of Elham Al-Zabaedy. Poet Mitch Manning, from the Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences at UMass Boston, will read his own poetry.
Visual artists Anne Loyer andAsmaa Samir Al-Hasan will present original art.
The art of Loyer andAl-Hasan, as well as that of Elham Al-Zabaedy, will be on display at Arts at the Armory, November 4, and at Midway Studios, October 7-30. Loyer, a visual artist and a coordinator of the Basra-Boston Project, co-created Tamziq: Scattered and Connected, an international and local collaboration between artists from the United States and the Middle East and Iraq. Al-Hasan teaches visual arts at the University of Basra.
The Basra-Boston Project promotes dialogue between individuals in countries separated by geography and war by sharing research and creative ideas. Initially, the project is designed as a pilot, with a focus on one-on-one collaboration, both artistic and scholarly.
The first public events in the Basra-Boston Project took place in Iraq in April 2016. Students of English at the University of Basra did a reading of early drafts of In the Reeds and Brides Look Forward. Also performed was "Panorama Joy." In June, a special 90-minute presentation of works-in-progress took place at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, as part of the annual Writers' Workshop of the Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences. Basra-Boston Connections was presented at Atlantic Wharf in Boston on October 1. Additional events are planned for next winter in Basra.
Basra-Boston Connections is presented as part of Fort Point Theatre Channel's Exclamation Point series, which since 2007 has offered 14 thematic evenings of short new works from many artistic genres. The series is supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and by a grant from the Boston Cultural Council, a local agency that is funded by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, administered by the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture.
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