Theatre Without Borders - Interview with Roberta Levitow

CreateCulture.org interview with Roberta Levitow
Director, Dramaturge, Teacher and Co-Founder of Theatre Without Borders - February 2010

Tell me about yourself

I was born in Los Angeles, California, and my parents were visual artists. My father worked in the animation film industry. I was surrounded by all forms of art - theater, music, visual arts, dance - and I chose theater as the medium for me. I worked in the theater for 35 years, primarily in the creation of new American work. I was excited about being part of a generation that was defining its time through its literature and its theatrical works and I was very motivated by the idea of contemporary art, of doing work within our time, about our time. I was part of a community of people who did new American plays, and with many people who went on to be defining artists for the 60s, the 70s and the 80s. Those are Anna Deavere Smith, Tony Kushner, Oskar Eustis, José Rivera, Connie Congdon, Paula Vogel - a lot of people who went on to get recognized for their work. So it was very exciting.

How did you become interested in international theatre?
When I cruised around age 50, I was getting disenchanted, I cannot say if it is because I was bored with my work or because the work was boring. The times had changed from the 60s and around the year 2000 the theatre seemed to me to be completely disconnected and yet there were so many things going on in the world. How did that happen? How did contemporary issues fall out of interest for contemporary American artists? So I decided that I would leave America behind. I was teaching at Bennington College and I was given the opportunity to teach a class about whatever I wanted. I wanted to learn about world theatre, so that’s what I taught. I didn’t know anything- I didn’t know about Indian theater styles, I had no idea that there were names for these African forms that had developed over centuries, etc. It was a terrible class, but the students were great and we all learned together. At one point a student came up to me while I was showing a video about Yoruba ritual and said “wouldn’t it be great to go to Africa?” And I thought, yes, it would be great to go to Africa! That was the catalytic moment. The next month I was on a plane and I landed in Nairobi to do this workshop in September 2001.

When did you start wanting to connect international theatre practitioners with each other?
I met some wonderful people in these workshops, and I didn’t want to loose contact with them. I couldn’t loose contact with people who had these different ideas and perspectives that helped me understand the world I was living in. It became imperative to me that American artists start having conversations with people who could present different points of view to them. For example, my colleague and friend Wahome Mutahi, in particular, whom I met in Nairobi; he was an artist, he was a person like me, so I could hear what he was saying, he did it through art work, and this started making me realize that while politicians can shout at each other, theater artists have an intent and a capacity to communicate, it’s our nature.

How did Theatre Without Borders come about?

I came back from Africa and met with friends who had had similar experiences, in Rwanda, Cambodia, Mexico, and we became obsessed with the idea that we had to keep the conversation going, but there was no American mechanism. So we decided that we were just going to meet, and a hundred people showed up at the first meeting. People longed for communication and believed that artist-to-artist communication was viable, was real. For the first couple of years that is what motivated a lot of people who came to us. And then my colleague Catherine Filloux coined the term Theatre Without Borders. We try to hold by the values of Doctors Without Borders, that is to be apolitical, and that is very difficult for some of the artists in some of the regions that we work in. But Doctors Without Borders will treat you whatever side of the conflict you are from, and that’s how we feel, we don’t need to know your politics in order for us to have a conversation. We are people-to-people diplomacy. We have also decided to stay grassroots, because in some of the countries where we have worked, that’s how people are making theater. I didn’t want to have any American sponsorship.

When did you launch the online platform?
I went as a Fulbright Specialist to three countries - Romania, Hong Kong and Uganda- and what I found was that young people were marooned when it came to information about what was going on in the rest of the world. So I thought that if nothing else, Theatre Without Borders could be an information portal, so that you could go to a website, and if you have a computer that has a fast enough DSL you can actually find where to go to find out for example where there is a training workshop. We can’t get you the money to get you there but you can get the information. Someone might write to me and say “I’m planning to go to Africa, can you set me up with people?”, and that’s the purpose, for me to write 15 emails to the people I know in that country and say that so and so is coming, if you are free, would you have tea with them.

What is your outlook for the future of cross-cultural dialogue through theatre?
Obama is here now, and I think this makes people feel differently about America, and social networking is evolving, so I am wondering what the future is going to be like for us. There is such a war in the US between the fine artist and the applied artist, and I find that artists in peace building contexts, are liberated from that dichotomy, they become artists with a social awareness, they might be fine artists but the conflict cannot escape their notice. And this to me is a middle ground within our American debate between artists and people with social mission. For me the potential of our “Theater and Peace Building Project” is to allow American artists time and space to consider the place of an artist now, in this contemporary world, and I am particularly interested in how American artists see themselves because it has a huge impact on the rest of the world.

Click here to learn more about Theatre Without Borders.