Bond Street Theatre

The Bond Street Theatre was founded in 1976 in New York City by a group of actors who have studied physical techniques such as mime, dance, acrobatics, and clowning. Bond Street's actor-educators work internationally in refugee camps, post-conflict zones, areas of poverty, and with populations that have been victims of natural disaster, using theatre to promote healing, empowerment, and social development through the arts. Bond Street Theatre is an NGO in association with the United Nations Department of Public Information. The company maintains office, storage, shop, and rehearsal space at 2 Bond Street in downtown Manhattan, New York, USA.[1]

History

The Bond Street Theatre was founded in 1976 by a group of physical actors with a bent towards humanitarian work. The company uses theatrical forms such as stilt walking, martial arts, masks, dance, circus arts, music, mime, puppetry, acrobatics, story telling and an array of styles. Using this diverse physical, visual and musical vocabulary, the company creates entertaining and relevant performances that exemplify theatre’s ability to illuminate social and environmental issues.[2]

As the company developed more international ties and incorporated more intercultural studies, the group began touring international festivals and theatres on a regular basis.

Over the last two decades, the need for cross-cultural understanding has been magnified and Bond Street Theatre has shifted in light of that change. Today, the company focuses on using the performing arts as a form of humanitarian outreach and as a tool for education and healing in refugee camps, areas of conflict and post-war environments. The ensemble collaborates with local artists in these areas to enjoy the mutual benefits of artistic exchange, and to promote the value of the arts in advancing peace and shaping our collective future. In addition, the company finds the means to bring our collaborators to the US to bring the issues of the world closer to our local communities, to dispel misunderstandings about other cultures, traditions and religions, and to affirm that we are indeed all of the same spirit and family.

Bond Street Theatre has spent years working in the Balkans, collaborating with theatre groups in Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Macedonia, Croatia, and Bulgaria. Since September 11, 2001, the company has been on a similar path in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

Bond Street Theatre has also brought its repertoire of dramatic and humorous works to major festivals and theatre audiences in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Japan, China, Indonesia, Singapore, Hungary, Romania, and across Western Europe, Canada and the USA.

Today, Bond Street Theatre continues to present innovative work in venues around the world. They initiate theatre programs for diverse community populations and collaborate with artists globally. In the USA, the company maintains an active Arts-in-Education program in schools and a popular Internship program that answers the growing interest among young artists in social theatre and internationally responsive arts programming.[3]

Palenville Interarts Colony

In 1983, the Bond Street Theatre established the Palenville Interarts Colony, an artists' retreat in upstate New York that fostered interdisciplinary collaboration and reached underserved rural audiences. The Colony also produced a community arts project and a Presenting Program, which presented artists such as Dave Brubeck & sons, Eiko & Koma, Bread & Puppet, Talking Band, and others.

Palenville Circus

As a way to bring the community and the Colony closer together, the group created a Children’s Circus – complete with Circus Band – that toured the County with their colorful circus tent, snappy costumes, and amazing feats of physical prowess! The Palenville Circus was trained, choreographed and outfitted by Bond Street Theatre actors and the parents of Palenville, with the added Community Circus skills of Reg Bolton, and Englishman who had created community circuses on five continents. The Circus delighted audiences in New York for five years and encouraged the circus arts to thrive across three counties.

The Governor of New York named a day in our honor, Palenville Circus Day. Dave Brubeck and his sons gave the Palenville Interarts Colony and the Palenville Children’s Circus two fantastic benefit concerts in the Theatre on the Colony grounds.

We meet the children from the Circus from time to time; they always tell us how the Circus changed their life. It introduced them to theatre, gave them good presentation skills and, most important, open their eyes to their own potential.

Overseas Work

Involvement in Israel

As a resident company at the 1984 Israel Festival, Bond Street Theatre brought together 60 Palestinian, Kurdish, and Jewish actors of all ages to create an expansive street theatre spectacle and Jerusalem’s first professional street theatre company which continued for many years.

Involvement in Afghanistan

Since 2001, Bond Street Theatre has been working in Afghanistan to revitalize the performing arts, introduce new styles of theatre, collaborate with local artists, teach university students, work for women's rights, and perform and teach children in schools and orphanages in both urban and rural areas. The company cooperates with NGOs and schools to train teachers and health workers in theatre-based techniques for teaching children. In 2007, the company gave extensive training for Afghanistan’s first all-girl theatre group in Kunduz.[4]

In 2005, Bond Street Theatre created Beyond the Mirror, a physical-visual depiction of Afghan history in collaboration with Exile Theatre of Kabul, a theatre group the company had met in a refugee camp in Pakistan. The two groups presented the play in Afghanistan, Japan, Baltimore and New York.[5]

The project is the first US-Afghan theatre collaboration, and Exile Theatre is the first Afghan theatre group to perform in the USA. In 2009, Exile Theatre returned to the USA for its second tour and the two companies presented Beyond the Mirror at the San Francisco International Arts Festival and the Fury Factory Festival in California. This arts exchange program was sponsored with the aid of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters and the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

In 2010, the company initiated its current Theatre for Social Development program. This ongoing project in Afghanistan, builds the capacity of Afghan theatre groups to develop productions that address social issues such as gender violence, health issues, conflict resolution, and other topics. In addition to theatre training, the program includes business training for local theatre groups to improve sustainability.

Through this program, Bond Street Theatre has created four all-female theatre groups in Afghanistan, a first in the country. These companies allow live theatre to reach women in isolated communities, women's prisons, women's shelters, and other all-female domains. The United States Institute of Peace sponsored this innovative program along with the US Embassy in Kabul.

Involvement in Haiti

In Spring 2011, Bond Street Theatre brought a three-week program of performances and workshops to the displaced population living in tent camps in Port-au-Prince and applied theatre-based methods toward post-crisis healing, empowerment and improved life skills as a means of community education and development. They worked in conjunction with the all women’s theatre group FAVILEK. FAVILEK (Women Victims Get Up, Stand Up) was founded in 1991 by ten survivors of domestic and political violence.

Bond Street Theatre focused on issues facing women and girls in the camps while also developing a supportive and constructive environment for the male population in order to combat the rising rate of gender and sexual violence. The company drew upon its vast experience of theatrical techniques to create a comprehensive, enriching program to address and develop positive group dynamics, build self-esteem, address trauma, stimulate imagination, create hope and cultivate empowerment and leadership.

Involvement in Burma

Myanmar is the focus of a broader artistic initiative by Bond Street Theatre involving ongoing creative work with Burmese refugees in Bangladesh and Thailand. Prolonged conflict between the Myanmar government and many internal ethnic groups has resulted in mass-migrations to neighboring countries. Bond Street Theatre is creating a play with the Gitameit Music School combining traditional and modern forms of Burmese theatre with its own physical-visual theatre style to perform in Myanmar and in the surrounding refugee areas.[6]

In 2009-2010, Bond Street Theatre worked as Cultural Envoys in Burma with Thila Min of Thukhuma Khayeethe (Art Travelers) Theatre. They created and performed The Handwashing Show, a show that creatively stressed the importance of hygiene. The show traveled to monastery schools and jungle villages near the Thai border.[7]

The company returned in the Spring of 2011 and to continue their theatrical programming, and further develop a full length production with Thukhuma Khayeethe about current issues facing Myanmar. This production will tour throughout the region.

Involvement in India

Bond Street Theatre collaborated on a theatre-based project for poor populations in India, in collaboration with the Indian theatre group, Purvabhyas Theatre, and Exile Theatre of Afghanistan. The three-country team (US-Afghanistan-India) worked with rural women to encourage self-expression and confidence, with street-working children to initiate non-violent "life skills," and with youth to explore the nature of ethnic and religious disputes. The multi-year project was sponsored by the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (US Department of State).

In cooperation with UNICEF, Bond Street Theatre created the South Asia Social Theatre Institute (SASTI) at the Gandhi Center in Delhi as a center for study and training in theatre-based approaches to leadership, conflict prevention, healing, and the transfer of information.[8]

Involvement in the Balkans

The summer of 2000, one year after the war which devastated Kosovo, Bond Street Theatre collaborated with Theatre Tsvete, an award-winning puppet theatre company from Bulgaria, to create a non-verbal version of Romeo & Juliet. Both companies met while performing in the Kosovar refugee camps the prior year. The two companies performed their collaborative "Romeo & Juliet" in war-torn theatres across Kosovo in 2000, and in Serbia, Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Macedonia, Romania, Croatia and Bulgaria in the following years.[9]

Performing Artists for Balkan Peace

In 2005, Bond Street Theatre and Theatre Tsvete initiated Performing Artists for Balkan Peace, an ongoing and expanding network of professional theatre companies, individual performing artists, and other theatre practitioners devoted to the active pursuit of peace, social progress and artistic cooperation through the performing arts, and places an emphasis on strengthening the role of artists in the community. Performing Artists for Balkan Peace includes theatre practitioners from 10 companies from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, England and the United States. Their first collaborative production, Honey and Blood, performed in Blagoevgrad and Sofia, Bulgaria in 2005 and International Festival of Authorial Poetics in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2006.[10]

Young Audiences Program

The programs for young audiences illuminate world arts and cultures, the relationship between math and music, and other curricula topics. The Young Audience Program is presented in New York City public schools, New York City libraries, and city parks.[11]

Productions

Since 1977, the Bond Street Theatre ensemble has developed 19 original productions, 4 adaptations of classic plays, 9 shows for young audiences, and one film, all of which have been presented in major festivals and theatres in the USA and abroad. These productions have reflected the social issues of their times: pollution, nuclear waste, war, consumerism, guns, working, inter-ethnic conflict, homelessness, religion and science.

Internationally, the company presented the first political street theatre in East Berlin in 50 years (1990), created programs for street children in Brazil (1992, 1996), established Jerusalem’s first street theatre company with Arabs, Kurds and Jews together (1984), taught Catholic and Protestant children side by side in Belfast (1990), worked with refugees from 60 countries in Montreal (1987), Kosovar refugees in Macedonia (1999), and Afghan refugees in Pakistan (2002).

Nightmare on Wall Street

In 1990, Bond Street presented Nightmare On Wall Street, directed by Polina Klimovitskaya. This was the first political street theatre in East Berlin in 50 years. Just after the Berlin Wall came down, this satire about capitalism was performed to an amazed crowd in Alexanderplatz, East Berlin, the first "legal" street theatre in East Germany for 50 years.

Werk

A workshop production of Werk went to Beijing, China, in 1995 for the UN Conference on Women, and the fully staged version brought us back to Brazil in 1996. Werk is a visual, physical, and musical exploration of working, focusing on the rhythms, dynamics, emotions, textures, poetry, flavor, and materials of work (fabric, grain, water, paper, and other tangibles). The piece reveals the beauty of work -its design, sounds and sensory aspects - as well as subsistence, power, survival, pride or pain. Werk pays attention to labor which does not get acknowledged, and pays homage to human self-sufficiency and resourcefulness.

Cozmic Jazz

Cozmic Jazz—A Short History of the Universe is a satiric and humorous story about humanity—and a comic commentary on "the meaning of life." A blend of music, dance, acrobatics, and comedy, the play has been presented in major Festivals in France, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Colombia, Venezuela, Singapore, Hungary and the US in 2002-2005.

Beyond the Mirror

Created with Exile Theatre of Kabul, Afghanistan in 2005, Beyond the Mirror is the first ever US-Afghan theatre collaboration. Filmed montages and interviews with everyday Afghans are layered with imagistic portrayals of their stories to create an evocative picture of the struggle to survive in the midst of chaos and violence. The play received positive response from audiences and media, including The New York Times, Newsweek, TimeOut, Village Voice, CNN, five NPR features, Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, American Theatre, and many Afghan publications. The group returned to the US with members of the Exile Theatre and performed at the South Asian Theatre Festival (New Jersey Performing Arts Center), at San Francisco International Arts Festival in California, and other venues. Exile Theatre is the first Afghan theatre company to perform in the USA.[12]

The Mechanical

The Mechanical, transplants the outcast creature from Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein into the true story of a sensational chess-playing robot built in the late 18th century. Using multi-media, puppetry and the physical abilities of the Bond Street Theatre ensemble, the production explores an age of revolutions – political, social, scientific and industrial – and the current, volatile crossings of science, art and religion.[13]

Shinbone Alley Stilt Band

The Shinbone Alley Stilt Band emerged as the live band accompanying the street theatre shows in the early 1980s that were performed in New York City. Originally, the performers would parade and play music, while characters on stilts would parade around before the show. Eventually, all the company members learned to walk on stilts. The Shinbone Alley Stilt Band was named after the alley next to the theatre on Bond Street, and made its debut with its new name in 1988 at a performance in Nagasaki, Japan.[14]

Awards

Bond Street Theatre received an award from The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (1990), presented at the United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing (1995), traveled as US State Department Cultural Envoys to Burma (2009), presented at the Arts in One World Conference (2010), won first prize at the Meppel Festival in Netherlands, and won Best Show at the KimTom Festival in Shanghai.[3]

References

  1. ↑ Bond Street Theatre 2012
  2. ↑ "Bond Street Theatre". Theatre. NYC-ARTS. Retrieved April 11, 2012.
  3. 1 2 A Brief History of Bond Street Theatre, Retrieved April 4, 2012
  4. ↑ Patel, Vibhuti (2005). "Plays for Peace". Newsweek.
  5. ↑ Jefferson, Margo (2005). "Telling Tale of Afghan Wars by Any Means Necessary", New York Times
  6. ↑ "Burma Projects". International Outreach. Bond Street Theatre. Retrieved April 11, 2012.
  7. ↑ "Bond Street Returns to Burma with the Support of the ACC". NYC News Desk. CityGuide NY. Retrieved April 11, 2012.
  8. ↑ "India Project". International Outreach. Bond Street Theatre. Retrieved April 11, 2012.
  9. ↑ Simpson, Daniel (2003). "Ambassadors for Peace, Armed With Slapstick", New York Times
  10. ↑ "Performing Artists for Balkan Peace - New US-Balkan arts network presents at the International Festival of Mostar, Bosnia & Herzegovina". News Center. PRWeb. Retrieved April 11, 2012.
  11. ↑ "Young Audiences". Bond Street Theatre. Retrieved April 11, 2012.
  12. ↑ Hurwitt, Robert (June 1, 2009). "Stark images of a war-torn country". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved April 25, 2012.
  13. ↑ "Performances". Bond Street Theatre. Retrieved April 11, 2012.
  14. ↑ "Shinbone Alley Stilt Band". Bond Street Theatre. Retrieved April 11, 2012.

Coordinates: 40°43′37″N 73°59′40″W / 40.72699°N 73.99457°W / 40.72699; -73.99457

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