This intimate conversation explores the fascinating ways in which our panelists have achieved poignant and thought-provoking theatre using technology, and how this has enhanced their theatrical vision. Now, more than ever, we are placing increasing reliance on technology as we navigate the future of the pandemic. This conversation asks the question, “how will theatre practitioners keep pace in this ever changing environment that is the New Norm?” Producer: Kati Hind, Moderator: Abigail Zealey Bess.

REGISTER HERE

Panelists: Lupe Gehrenbeck (GCITA 2020 Nominee – Venezuela), Faynia Williams (GCITA 2020 Nominee – England), Burbuqe Berisha (GCITA 2020 Nominee – Kosovo), Avra Sidiropoulou (GCITA 2020 Nominee – Greece)

Kati Hind is a freelance Production Manager & LX/Set designer, who graduated from Edinburgh University and subsequently RADA. Recent LX & Set Design credits include: Magic Flute (Theater-im-Delphi, Berlin), Blueprint Media, (Finborough Theatre, London) Leviticus (Edinburgh Festival Run), St Joan (Bedlam Theatre, Edinburgh, & International Tour), Breaking the Silence, Busy Night, The Jabberwocky, An Actress Prepares, Kabaret Berlin, Ladies Not Required, You Want me To do What? and Show Down (Edinburgh Festival Run). Currently based in Sheffield, England, recent work includes: Re-lighter for Bull, (59E59 Theatres, New York & Young Vic) and Shooter, European Tour. Production Management credits include: Fanfared, Passing Through and The Sheffield Sizzler for Sheffield Theatres, and Paper Doll for Weird Sisters, Edinburgh.

Abigail Zealey Bess is an award-winning filmmaker, theatre and film director, and educator who specializes in new works. In 1997, she established her theatrical company, Weird Sisters which is devoted to the promotion of prolific women artists and writers and giving voice to new thought-provoking work both in the NY region and in Europe. Zealey Bess directed and produced her debut film, the award-winning baseball trilogy: Play Ball! (Fanfare for A Common Man, Random Acts of Intimacy, Caught in Time) that screened at over 40 USA festivals and throughout the globe . In addition to garnering Best Film at seven USA festivals, she was awarded 1st Prize for Best Short Film by a woman director at the LA Women In Film Competition. She has directed and produced numerous new works at the Ensemble Studio Theatre based in New York, where syhe is a long-standing member. Her recent credits include the award-winning NY Fringe Winner The Radicalization of Rolfe by Andy Burgh at the Players Theatre, and her award-winning film Icarus Stops For Breakfast and Mary and Louise, (Awards: Best Short film screenplay LA FF, Accolade Award Competition Special Merit, Best Composer Score, Brit Penrod Best Trailer, WIF Finalist). She currently has two full length features in development and is on the Faculty for the Graduate Film Program at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, Columbia University, and NYCDA.

Lupe Gehrenbeck is a playwright, director and screenwriter whose work invites audiences to exit their comfort zone, to migrate from their lives to understand others’, to imagine and engage with a better future. Gehrenbeck started Collective Creation/Street Theatre in 1990, which produces a play every year with the children of the Los Chorros neighborhood in Caracas. That led UNESCO in 2017 to commission THEATER WITHOUT BORDERS, a project to enhance resilience in migrant children at the southern border of Mexico. The project integrated creative workshops where children were given voice and expression, and the opportunity to create and share their truth and individual stories. A documentary of that experience inspired others around the world to initiate similar projects. Gehrenbeck uses her technique to train theatre professionals as well. She has collaboratively developed and independently produced more than 25 plays in Caracas and internationally, across three continents in multiple cities, using the same independent collaborative format to adapt the work to local audiences. She has written extensively for film and television, and also created multi-media programming for museums, galleries and educational institutions. Gehrenbeck has received multiple awards and recognition for her work including the Teatro Autor Express Prize for her play Cruz de Mayo (General Society of Authors and Editors, Spain 2016), a nomination for Venezuela’s Isaac Chocron Playwright Award in 2015, 2016 and 2017, and several awards and nominations for her acting. Since March 2020, Gehrenbeck has run GALTO Theater, which creates live-streamed performances exploring the new reality we are living in.

Burbuqe Berisha was born and raised in Prishtina, Kosovo. Growing up during the war influenced her desire to use the arts as a way to raise awareness of and offer solutions for the underlying issues that promote violence and the lack of opportunity for women in her patriarchal society. Often facing public resistance, Berisha has created, directed and produced innovative theatre that advocate for radical change, Her constant work on breaking down barriers has resulted in a major increase in Kosovan theater productions in the country and touring internationally. She has created a significant number of short films as well as documentaries, television series and feature films. A Pristina Story has earned prestigious awards at international theater festivals and the annual award for theater cinematography. Berisha received her undergraduate and Master’s degrees in Film Directing from the University of Prishtina and was the first woman to professionally direct for television in the country. She was Director General of the National Theatre of Kosovo for four years and then Chair of the Board. She is also a member of the board of directors of the Gjakova Theatre, as well as of Shota, The National Song and Dance Ensemble. Berisha is an associate professor at AAB University in Kosovo, and Dean of the Faculty for Mass Communication and Journalism.

Avra Sidiropoulou is a director, theatre scholar, and educator. She has been the artistic director of the Athens-based Persona Theatre Company since 2003, which travels to locations with troubled histories to meet and collaborate with “The Other” and develop work that offers a vision of a peaceful world. She is also academic head of the Μ.Α. Program in Theatre Studies at the Open University of Cyprus and has been a visiting researcher at leading universities internationally. Her theatre projects include visual and multimedia adaptations of the classical repertoire, but she is especially interested in international collaborative projects, aspiring to create connections among artists, aesthetic forms and cultures. Sidiropoulou has written two monographs that delve into the history, theory and methodology of directing: Directions for Directing. Theatre and Method (Routledge 2018) and Authoring Performance: The Director in Contemporary Theatre (2011) and has contributed academic articles and chapters to several international peer-reviewed journals and edited collections. Sidiropoulou’s mission is to gain an understanding of the world, collaborating with people from different ethnic, cultural, religious, and other backgrounds to help forge new transcultural, transnational human relationships, based on the transcending of the private in favor of the public. Her multifaceted theatre career has allowed her to achieve these goals by building bridges that not only enrich our understanding and experience of theatre, but also help make the world the better, more open place it deserves to be.

Faynia Williams is a multi-award winning international director and a BBC Producer of drama and documentaries with programs on Joan Littlewood, Pina Bausch, Theatre in the Round, & the Moscow Art Theatre. As Artistic Director of Brighton Theatre, she used the Power of the Arts to go where politics cannot with the aim of effecting change. Her passion for theatre, born at the Brighton Hippodrome in the age of Variety, taught her how to engage by entertaining, a discovery she has carried into all her work including in conflict zones. Williams believes international understanding and face to face exchange is crucial in preventing and healing conflict. Her theatre work in conflict and post conflict zones, including working with post war Sudanese child soldiers to ‘get the gun out of their heads, feeds into all her work. She also believes in crossing other nonphysical borders, such as art and science, which is presented in her most recent production MOZZZ! a week in the life of an undercover mosquito, where she worked with the Mentor Initiative on Vector borne diseases. She currently teaches British Theatre and British Film at the University of Sussex and as a Fellow in Theatre in Bradford she founded a Women’s Company, Chain Reaction. Williams also worked with the UN to create a show starring a Ugandan actress which was at the cutting edge of events in Central & Eastern Europe and in Gaza. She helps others through teaching and mentoring and through her work as former Chair of the Directors Guild of GB, Equity & ITI Committees. Her work has won numerous awards.