Teatro del Pueblo and Pangea World Theater’s The House on Mango Street is featured in this month’s GoSeeDo Guide in the Minnesota Women’s Press. Check it out here! 

One hundred and twenty-seven organizations (including Pangea World Theater) in 68 cities have been named finalists for support from ArtPlace, an unprecedented private-public collaboration of nine of the nation’s top foundations, eight federal agencies including the National Endowment for the Arts, and six of the nation’s largest banks. ArtPlace supports creative placemaking with grants and loans, research and advocacy.

The selected projects represent the best of the more than 2,000 applications from across the country. Finalists were chosen for their potential to have a transformative impact on community vibrancy. Proposed projects run the gamut from temporary art spaces to permanent performance venues, from music festivals to art walks and from streetscaping to artist residencies.

ArtPlace expects to distribute $15 million in 2012. This year’s grant recipients will be announced in May. Last year, 34 organizations received a total of $11.5 million.

Participating foundations include Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Ford Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Rasmuson Foundation, The Robina Foundation and an anonymous donor. In addition to the NEA, federal partners are the departments of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Education and Transportation, along with leadership from the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Domestic Policy Council. ArtPlace is also supported by a $12 million loan fund capitalized by six major financial institutions and managed by the Nonprofit Finance Fund. Participating institutions are Bank of America, Citi, Deutsche Bank, Chase, MetLife and Morgan Stanley.

For more information on ArtPlace or the finalists, please contact:

Tim Halbur, tim@artplaceamerica.org (415)948-1398

Pangea World Theater and Teatro del Pueblo are proud to have been chosen to receive the prestigious 2012 Joyce Award to commission artists of color to create new works that reflect the intersections between the Latino and Asian communities. The award comes with a $50,000 grant to commission three playwrights. Lead artist, Luis Alfaro, will be working with Aravind Adyanthaya and Marlina Gonzalez to create the Latino/Asian Fusion series in collaboration with Teatro del Pueblo and Pangea World Theater, two Twin Cities theater companies. The project unfolds a series of plays inspired by the merging of Latino and Asian cultures. The new work intends to challenge the current aesthetic of theatrical artistic norms by the establishment of a new type of hybrid work that speaks to the changing demographics in our communities and builds bridges of understanding between the Latino and Asian community. Specific topics covered will include love stories of interracial couples, difficulties within each culture, and tensions between the ethnically diverse communities.

Created in 1948, The Joyce Foundation’s grant making focuses on “initiative that promise to have an impact on the Great Lakes region.” Their culture program is intended to strengthen the infrastructure of culturally specific arts organizations and support the commissioning and production of the new works that are relevant to minorities.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO WATCH A VIDEO FROM THE JOYCE FOUNDATION!

For photos, interviews and/or additional information, contact Alberto Justiniano at 651-224-8806 or al@teatrodelpueblo.org

What if you could help us win $1000 just by giving 10 bucks?  On November 16, Give to the Max Day, you can.

Last year, more than 42,000 donors logged on to GiveMN.org and gave over $10 million to Minnesota charities in 24 hours during Give to the Max Day. Together, we have the power to raise millions of dollars for thousands of nonprofits. Pangea World Theater, with GiveMN.org – a first-of-its-kind giving website for nonprofits in Minnesota – is working to create a stronger nonprofit community for Minnesota.

GiveMN’s Give to the Max Day amplifies your giving impact in a number of ways:

• Win a Golden Ticket! $1,000 will be given to a random donor’s charity every hour.  You could be that donor!
• Put us on the Leader Board!  $15,000, $10,000 and $5,000 prize grants will be awarded to the top three nonprofit organizations (colleges and universities excluded) which receive the most dollars in 24 hours during Give to the Max Day.
• NEW THIS YEAR!  $15,000, $10,000 and $5,000 prize grants will be awarded to the top three small nonprofit organizations – with budgets under $750,000 – which receive the most dollars on Give to the Max Day.
• NEW THIS YEAR!  $15,000 and $5,000 prize grants will be awarded to the top two Minnesota colleges or universities which receive the most dollars on Give to the Max Day.

What is GiveMN?

GiveMN.org is the smart way for you to discover, support and engage with the charities that are right for you. The online giving platform allows you to easily find organizations that match your giving goals, support them through secure credit or debit card donations, receive automated tax deductible receipts through email, and conveniently track and record your donations in a single online location. You can now also fundraise for your favorite causes—like us!—on GiveMN too by creating a fundraiser page.

As you consider your charitable end-of-year giving, please consider participating in Give to the Max Day November 16.  GiveMN is easy to use, and your gift to Pangea World Theater will make a huge difference to our ongoing work.

Pangea World Theater and Teatro del Pueblo to hold AUDITIONS for
The House on Mango Street
adapted by Amy Ludwig
from the novel by Sandra Cisneros

Monday, November 21: 7-10pm
Tuesday, November 22: 4-8pm
Wednesday, November 23: 4-8pm
Callbacks: Tuesday, November 29: 4-8pm

Auditions will be held at the Pangea World Theater Studio in the Calhoun Building at 711 West Lake Street in Minneapolis.

Please bring a headshot and resume and prepare 2 contrasting monologues (and an optional movement piece) not to exceed 3 minutes in total.  We welcome auditions bilingually in Spanish and English.  Please also be prepared to note any potential conflicts upon arrival at the audition.

To schedule an appointment, please email Katie at Katie@pangeaworldtheater.org or call 612-822-0015 x1. Please leave a message with your name, contact information, desired date and time slot.

All ages, ethnicities, and genders are encouraged to audition.

Rehearsals begin March 5, 2012
Preview: April 12, 2012
Run: April 13-28, 2012
at the Southern Theater

Pangea World Theater illuminates the human condition, celebrates cultural differences, and promotes human rights by creating and presenting international, multi-disciplinary theater.

Teatro del Pueblo promotes Latino culture through the creation and presentation of performing arts.

Teatro del Pueblo and Pangea World Theater collaborated for the first time in 2010 to produce the ninth annual Political Theatre Festival and The House of Bernarda Alba.  Their experiences were so successful that the two theaters have since begun a long-term journey of collaboration and sharing of resources.

“In this particular time it is imperative that like-minded organizations find new ways to partner to maximize the impact of our work in our community and the field of American Theater as a whole,” says Pangea’s Executive and Literary Director, Meena Natarajan.  Alberto Justiniano of Teatro del Pueblo agrees: “This partnership will create powerful theater while renewing our individual artistic practices and institutions.”

Eleven Reflections on September is a poetry-based, multi-media performance on Arab American experience, Wars on/of Terror, and “the constant, quiet rain of death amidst beauty” that each autumn brings in a post-9/11 world.

Through United States Artists, Pangea World Theater Artist-in-Residence, Andrea Assaf, is fundraising for the newest incarnation of this project, a full-length theater production based on the series of poems she’s been writing since 2001. Her vision is to include live music, interactive video and sound design, and a time-based set installation in which dialogues about the content of the work can be staged.

Her goal is to raise a minimum of $5000 for the inaugural production at Pangea World Theater’s Alternate Visions Festival in April 2011. Any additional funds raised, up to $15,000, will go to support national touring, and her dream of extending the project to an international exchange with artists in Lebanon, Poland, Mexico and beyond.

Click here to view a video, read more, and support this amazing project!

This weekend: Writer Heid E. Erdrich has constructed this event to illustrate the importance of 19th-century history in shaping contemporary American Indian identity. Dance, visual art, Ojibwe hymn singing and media are mixed into the performance. Erdrich named the show for Ojibwe people who died in Europe while traveling as curiosities on display. Erdrich, a poet, has founded Birchbark House with her sister, Louise. It is a clearinghouse for indigenous language-centered literature. Pangea World Theater’s Dipankar Mukherjee directs “Curiosities,” which has a cast of 12. (7:30 p.m. Fri., 2 & 7:30 p.m. Sat., 4 p.m. Sun., Intermedia Arts, 2822 Lyndale Av. S., Mpls.; $12, 612-871-4444.)

photo by Tom Wallace

GRAYDON ROYCE

For Star Tribune article in its original context, click here.

by Sheila Regan
City Pages
11/17/10

This week Pangea World Theater presents their latest play, Curiosities, written by Ojibwe poet Heid Erdrich. The production is part of the larger work of the theater, which in many ways is about forming alliances with various communities of color and individuals who have lacked representation–both in society as a whole and in the artistic sphere.

“Collaborative politics is a very strong part of our proactive consciousness,” says Dipankar Mukherjee, Pangea’s Artistic Director, who also directed Curiosities. “As artists of color and as an organization of color, we are well versed in these politics.” Pangea out of necessity knows how to negotiate with dominant culture, and the white organizations that serve as the gatekeepers for that culture.

Mukherjee remembers the atmosphere right after 9/11. At the time he was often mistaken for Arab, though he is Indian. At that same time he heard reports of Muslim children being openly harassed at school. He said he went to his contacts, who are also artists of color, hoping to do something, but received little support. People would ask him why he was getting involved. “In America, there’s a lack of collaborative politics among people of color. There’s no conscious working together.”

He’s trying to change that. Pangea actively seeks relationships with organizations from different communities. Last year the company co-produced productions with Teatro del Pueblo, a Latino theater company in St. Paul, and has made a commitment to pool resources with them for the next five years. “We’ve doubled our possibilities of employment,” Mukherjee says. “We joined together, doing plays with a much larger cast, doubling our individual units as two organizations.”

Al Justiniano, Artistic Director of Teatro del Pueblo, says that the two organizations are sort of inventing it as they go, learning how pooling resources can make each organization stronger. “As far as I know,” he says, “there’s no precedent for it.” While Pangea and Teatro each maintain their own identity, they collaborate where their vision comes together, such as giving voice to the immigrant community, a goal that each organization shares. The partnership also allows each company to “push the envelope and take more risk” than they might have done in the past, according to Justiniano.

Pangea hosts a number of different programs that attempt to engage underrepresented communities. Their Indigenous Voices Series was created in 2001 to explore issues in the indigenous agenda, while their Voices of Exile series gives writers from immigrant and refugee communities a chance to develop works in both their own language and English for their own communities as well as the broader public. Their current production, Curiosities, was first workshopped during their Alternate Visions Series, which provides immigrant, minority, and Native American writers a chance to develop their craft leading to main stage production.

Curiosities looks at the historical phenomenon of Native Americans being taken to Europe and put on display as oddities. Erdrich’s script turns the issue on its head, as Native Americans observe and document the “curious” European culture.

Mukherjee says he always remains conscious of the politics of space and representation in the work he does. “It is imperative,” he says. Thus, he places special importance in working with the people from the community who are being represented. For this production, he has made sure that Erdrich was involved in the casting process. “We are so conscious of those politics,” he says. “Otherwise historically what happens is that they’re represented. They’re never the primary voice — never the documenters of their work.”

Erdrich says that she’s had a wonderful yet challenging experience working with Pangea. She has been particularly happy with how open all the performers have been, bringing their own voices to the piece.

Please click here to view the complete article on CityPages.com.

Teatro del Pueblo and Pangea World Theater announce auditions for Oedipus el Rey .

AUDITIONS will be held SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 7 from 4-7pm (in ten minute time slots) at Teatro del Pueblo, 209 Page Street, Suite 208, St. Paul, MN  55107.

Please call or email for an appointment: 612-822-0015 x1 or katie@pangeaworldtheater.org.  (Please leave a message with desired audition time.)

IF YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO ATTEND, BUT WOULD LIKE TO AUDITION, PLEASE CALL TO SET UP ANOTHER APPOINTMENT.

Please prepare two monologues for a total of up to 3 minutes.  Optional: Include an additional movement piece in that 3 minutes.

Oedipus el Rey will be directed by Dipankar Mukherjee, Artistic Director of Pangea World Theater, and run March 10-27, 2011 at the Lab Theater with rehearsals beginning January 24, 2011.

All ages, ethnicities, and genders are encouraged to audition.

Teatro del Pueblo’s mission as a non-profit theater company is to promote cultural pride in the Latino community, to develop and support Latino talent, to educate the community at large about Latino culture and to promote cultural diversity in the arts.

Pangea World Theater illuminates the human condition, celebrates cultural differences, and promotes human rights by creating and presenting international, multi-disciplinary theater.