10/16/ 2011 LPTW Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award
Please join the International Committee of the LPTW and celebrate the first Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award presentation to Rwandan Theatre Artist, Odile Gakire Katese.
DATE:
October 16, 2011 | 5 pm - 7 pm
VENUE:
Cultural Services of the French Embassy
972 5th Avenue (79th Street)
rsvp to: international@theatrewomen.org
**For more info on our International Committee and Events with Odile Gakire Katese, click HERE
The International Committee and the LPTW Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award
In 2003, the International Committee of the LPTW was formed by Joanne Pottlitzer, theatre artist and writer advocating and connecting theatre activity between the US and Chile.
The International Committee determined to seek out women theatre artists around the globe in order to invite them to share their vision and projects with us and become Affiliates of the LPTW.
Last year, the Committee was given the valuable mission of creating nominee guidelines for the newly created LPTW Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award. Nominations identifying international women artists were guided by
the following criteria: artistic excellence; candidates for whom recognition at home and abroad would make a difference; candidates whose work is inherently supportive of women; women artists whose work inspires and educates us.
The LPTW membership at large was invited to make submissions. The International Committee was moved by reading the letters of support and biographies of twenty artists who have changed the face of theatre in their worlds.
It was decided to create a booklet featuring all twenty nominees in order to share with you our admiration for these remarkable women. We have found that there are no borders when it comes to theatre excellence.
Our first LPTW Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Awardee
The LTPW International Award is named in recognition of Rosamond Gilder who created, and Martha Coigney who continued the stewardship of the International Theatre Institute (ITI) in the face of “cold war” despotism and censorship of the arts worldwide.
Our first LPTW Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Awardee will be presented to theatre artist Odile Gakire Katese, an astonishing match for the aims of our award. Bringing home her theatre training from France, Odile established the first performing arts program at the National University of Rwanda, Her dream was to galvanize healing after the 1994 national genocide by creating opportunities for expression, reconciliation and hope via theatre. Additionally, as a theatre director, playwright, actress, and filmmaker, creating artistic works of the highest quality, her impressive body of theatre pieces include: Des Espoirs (“Wish For Hope”), a dance/theatre work about rebuilding after trauma; the founding of Amizero Kompagie, Rwanda’s first professional contemporary dance company; the founding of Ingoma Nshya “Women’s Initiative” the country’s first women’s drumming group with 150 members - breaking the taboo of drums being played exclusively by men for kings and princes - and Ngwino Ubeho a theater piece (developed at Sundance Theatre Institute) is best understood by its translated title “Come and Be Alive” and in the words of the
playwright herself:
“You unfurl the wings of time and to both tips you tie all the threads that weaves my name. you take a handful of the earth that covers me and infuse each speck with a breath of eternity…» « Every morning, I get up at dawn I search for you in the thick cotton fog I turn every ray of sun upside down. Take my hand and let me pull you out of the dark abyss where you fall a little more every day. Yes, take my hand now ».
It is the humanitarian outcomes of theatre-making at its highest levels that are the treasures that we aim to honor by our selection of Odile Gakire Katese as our first LPTW Gilder/ Coigney International Theatre Awardee.