NextThreeDays: Event Display

Art, Community, Ecology, and Health: Let Me Sit with You a While
Venue: Blacksburg Library, Blacksburg
Directions: Google Map Link
Organizations: Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts
Date: Thursday, February 20, 2020
Time: 4:00 - 5:30 PM
Event Types: Arts & Theatre, Speaking Engagements, Class
Cost: Free

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Description:
The Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts presents a Colloquium Series titled "Art, Community, Ecology, and Health" with the first event in the series titled "Let Me Sit with You a While, or The Challenge of Theater is the Challenge of the World" on Thursday, February 20, 2020 at the Blacksburg Library.

Todd London brings his talk and workshop, "Let Me Sit with You a While, or The Challenge of Theater is the Challenge of the World". He will speak on the contemporary theatre scene from a national perspective on local initiatives and how the institutions and the artists of this story-telling art form lie at the heart of good social health.

What brings us together? What keeps us apart? Theater is one of humanity's most enduring ways of exploring both conflict and communion in society. More, it's a way of modeling society itself. How do we make a world that supports individual freedom/distinction and collective welfare?

We'll explore together these tensions or are they complementary strengths of the art form and the collaborative process of making plays.

Todd London, an essayist, novelist, arts journalist, and theatre historian, who has written, edited, or contributed to more than twenty books with several more on the way. Dr. London is the Head of the MFA Playwriting Program at the New School, School of Drama and the Director of Theatre Relations for the Dramatists Guild of America. From 2014-18 he was the Executive Director of the University of Washington's School of Drama, where he held the Floyd U. Jones Family Endowed Chair in Drama. Before that he spent 18 seasons as Artistic Director of New York's New Dramatists, the nation's oldest laboratory theatre for playwrights, where he created programs for and worked closely with more than 150 of America’s leading playwrights and advocated nationally and internationally for hundreds more.

This is a public talk and workshop that is free and open to all.

"Art, Community, Ecology, and Health" is a series of talks and workshops by nationally recognized artists and thought leaders on the power and practice of art and culture as essential elements of healthy communities. These public presentations are meant to lead to open dialogue on the practical values of art as a core element for building strong communities.

For more information, visit: http://www.montgomery-floyd.lib.va.us/ or https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blacksburg-Library/152248358735 or call 540-552-8246.