IN THE SHADOW OF TRAGEDY: Artistic Responses To A Traumatic Year Will Be Performed by Elm Shakespeare Company

In the Shadow of Tragedy: Artistic Responses to a Traumatic Year will be presented via Zoom and on Facebook LIVE on Thursday, May 27th at 7 pm as the final event of Elm Shakespeare Company's free, online series, Building a Brave New Theater: Holding Space and Giving Voice.

Join theatre-makers Rebecca S'manga Frank, Dawn Stern, and Gracy Brown to share and discuss three new works. All works presented this evening were created in response to the multiple national tragedies of the past year, including the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the many lives lost to Covid-19, the closure of theatres, the newly energized fight for equity, and the adjustments made to survive a pandemic.

The evening will be moderated by Kendell R. Pinkney, a Brooklyn-based theatre-maker, dramaturg, and rabbinical student who works at the intersection of race, identity, ritual, and sacred text. The evening will ask questions about the role and responsibility of the arts and artists in times of crisis, what processing the shared trauma of the past year can look like, and the relevancy of Shakespeare - all in the context of a theatre world looking to find and forge new forms and new voices. It is an opportunity to hear visionary artists discuss their creative process, the social justice movement, and what comes next.

Registration is required and can be made at https://www.elmshakespeare.org/bnt2021.

Elm Shakespeare Company presents this online screening and discussion with sponsorship from Webster Bank, the Elizabethan Club of Yale University, and SCSU Theatre. Elm Shakespeare Company designed and launched the first Building a Brave New Theatre series in 2020 to understand and amplify BIPOC artists' experiences of these plays and ask critical questions raised after centuries of Bardolatry. The 2021 iteration, Holding Space & Giving Voice, expands the conversation to include a diversity of artists changing the practices and perceptions of Shakespeare for a new world.