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The 55-minute ATWS documentary highlights stories of nine exemplary peacebuilding performance practitioners and their reflections on key questions and dilemmas from the field. The documentary has played in thousands of venues around the world. It won the Spirit of Place Award for excellence in social realism and activism in the arts. |
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Acting Together on the World Stage highlights performances that non-violently resist abuses of power, rehumanize adversaries in each other's eyes, and contribute to reconciliation in the aftermath of violence. They include artist-based and community-based performance works as well as rituals and ceremonies - from Argentina, Australia, Cambodia, Peru, Serbia, Uganda, and the United States.
The documentary is structured in three acts that correspond to stages of violence. RESISTANCE: War, occupation, and state terror rip apart the fabric of community life and give rise to rage, hatred, and fear. Performances stimulate creativity, restore capacities for expression, and help communities to non-violently resist abuses of authority. REHUMANIZATION: Performances support adversaries to reclaim the humanity of themselves and each other, to build relationships across differences, to imagine the suffering of the other, and to celebrate identity while acknowledging interdependence. RECONCILIATION: Performances can support communities to acknowledge complicities and losses, address injustice, let go of bitterness, and imagine and give substance to a new future. They offer a place where justice and mercy can coexist. |
As we see in the performances highlighted in Acting Together on the World Stage, art is not just contemplation and transcendence, but also a form of justice that cleanses and vindicates our species in a universal way. SALOMÓN LERNER FEBRES
President, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, PERU 2001 |
