CURATOR

When Will the Water Come?

producer, director

The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics in collaboration with the Earth Commons presents, When Will the Water Come – an evening of readings, short plays, monologues, poetry, and music about water and our environment, featuring students from Professor Derek Goldman’s TPST/ CULP 2036 Global Performance and Politics course, as well as professional guest artists, curated and directed by Ashanee Kottage, Lab/Earth Commons Fellow.

The performance brings together an expansive range of cultural perspectives, theatrical forms, and narratives to explore the scientific, political, elemental, and intimately personal dimensions of water. This multi-disciplinary performance and roundtable event features material from the recently launched We Hear You–A Climate Archive, a global performance project exploring youth perspectives on the climate emergency and the 2023 Climate Change Theater Action a worldwide festival of short plays about the climate crisis presented biennially to coincide with the United Nations COP meetings. This event is also part of an ongoing suite of activities featuring student and professional performances curated by The Lab leading up to COP 28, including the forthcoming conference Sustaining the Oasis: Envisioning the Future of Water Security in the Gulf, to be held at the Georgetown campus in Qatar.

Kavaya

co-founder

An Eco-Literature Circle and Affinity Group by and for the Global Majority

To commune. share, read, discuss, and feel books about the land, the earth, and all that it holds. Exclusively books written by the Global Majority.

To reconnect with our ancestral connections to the earth, to synchronize, collectivize, and commune in protest to Georgetown University’s predominantly white space.

Surya

project manager

The Lab for Global Performance and Politics and the Earth Commons are convening a select group of artists, thought leaders, and changemakers to a special three day convening at the Lab’s studios at the historic Fillmore School.

This event at the intersection of art and environment will enable us to share in one another’s work, grapple with critical questions, and build a community for mutual inspiration to imaginatively restore power to the Earth. The weekend will include highly participatory workshops, meals, movement and communal interactions in nature, celebratory ritual, and honest discussions around place, land, and futures.

How do we reconcile what we are beginning to know with what we used to know and what we are yet to know? What words can encapsulate and archive the kaleidoscope of the world as it experiences growing pains?

Renowned Author Amitav Ghosh Advocates for Environmental Literature

Children and Changemaking in the Midst of a Climate Crisis

co-facilitator

When we discuss the future, who do we mean? The children of today and tomorrow are inheriting a world riddled with poverty, food and water insecurity, illness, and environmental degradation — all of which climate change will further intensify. Children are uniquely vulnerable in the sense that their developing bodies are not as resilient to the environmental stressors surrounding them, and they lack a proper seat at the table to successfully advocate for a decent future for themselves. However, this has not stopped children and youth from communing and resisting. Children today are arming themselves with the proper education, standing up as youth advocates, and calling for meaningful change in the fight against the climate crisis.

But what does it mean for young people’s mental and physical health to not just be students and children, but also activists and changemakers? What does it mean for a community to come from trauma? How can we celebrate their successes while critically evaluating the turmoil that pushed these responsibilities onto them? At this interactive workshop, participants will discuss the dynamic role of children and youth in climate activism followed by some reflecting, journaling, and storytelling of their own stories about growing up in the climate crisis, including how the children in our lives continue to challenge and inspire us.

This event is co-sponsored by the Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues; Walsh School of Foreign Service; Center for Child and Human Development; Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching and Service; Environmental Justice Program; Global Human Development Program; Global Health Institute; Environmental Metrology and Policy Program; Earth Commons; and Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University. It is part of the Children in a World of Challenges Workshop series.

Workshop Series Highlights Urgency and Hope on Global Children’s Issues

Power of dialogue: bridging the rural-urban divide

teaching assistant and facilitator

The Power of Dialogue: Deconstructing the Rural-Urban Divide is an experiential learning opportunity for undergraduates at Georgetown and Radford University. This credit-bearing course takes place both in rural Appalachia and Washington, D.C. Undergraduate students from Georgetown and Radford University spend three days exploring in-depth conflict resolution skills through interactive simulations and exercises, outdoor activities such as ropes courses, canoeing, and hiking, and learning more about rural communities and Appalachian culture. The program continues for a three-day session held in Washington, D.C. Students immerse themselves in the D.C. community and explore issues salient to urban development and renewal specific to D.C., with the aim of further developing skills in dialogue and cultural dexterity explored during the first part of the program. This year Ashanee Kottage and Rabbi Rachel Gartner facilitated a session of the performance-based dialogue methodology In Your Shoes: Performing One Another

Prakrti

project manager  

From ancient times, Dharmic traditions: Tribal/Regional Dharmas, Śaiva, Śākta, Vaiṣṇava, Smārta, Sanātana/Hindu Dharmas, Buddha Dharma, Jain Dharma, and Sikh Dharam have not only lived in unison with their environment but also derived deep spiritual grounding in nature. For instance, Buddhist forest monasteries, the Bishnois, and the story of Govardhana.

How did they root themselves in their nature? How did they interact with the growing phenomena of statecraft? How did they reconcile with cities encroaching on their forests? How are they resisting threats to their land, their sites of worship, and their deities (the trees, the soil, the sun) right now?

Are animals life sources, sustenance, vehicles, deities, or all of the above? The Santal and Bishnoi are both matriarchal communities, what does it mean for women to lead the protection and preservation of the earth? Isn’t the earth too, a woman (Bhūmi)? What is the relationship between our bodies and the soil? How do transgender peoples embody their roots in nature?

Join us in dialogue, ceremonies, celebration on the lessons and stories from Dharmic traditions for practicing care for Mother Nature. On every full moon from December to March, we will gather around a fire, perform Full Moon ceremonies, share food and stories to unearth diverse perspectives on these complex questions. Space for oral traditions in a literary world, tribal people, chose to stay away from metropolis

Gathering at the Watering Whole

project manager

Organized a multi-sensory community gathering and poetry reading for the launch of Watering Whole: Poems by Jan Ellis Menafee

What’s up friend,

For my birthday last month, I published my first book of poetry, Watering Whole. I’m overflowing with gratitude for the support from family and friends, new and old. Now, in collaboration with afrotranscendental and Kavaya, I’d like to invite you to the first ever Gathering at the Watering Whole on Thursday, February 2nd at 1801 35th Street NW.

This gathering will not only celebrate all the people that poured themselves into this book, but also deepen our personal and communal relationships with water. We will feel, fall, flow, and reignite our faith in water with an evening of meditation, ritual, writing, and sharing.

Together, we will reimagine ways of listening, learning, giving thanks, and praying for our spirits and bodies of water. Amitav Ghosh reminds me that “Recognizing that the earth is alive is the key to responding to climate crisis. The planet will never come alive for you, unless your songs and stories give life to all the beings, seen and unseen, that inhabit a living Earth. What is at stake is not so much storytelling itself but rather the question of who can make meaning?” On February 2nd, let’s remember and reconnect.

Love,

Jan

Dialogue & Difference: In Your Shoes; Performing One Another

In Your Shoes™ employs innovative techniques rooted in theatrical performance, group dialogue, and deep listening to offer a groundbreaking experiential approach to countering polarization, engaging across difference, and promoting civil discourse.

Facilitated an interdisciplinary course of 11 students to engage narratives from various pandemics using techniques of devised performance as a catalyst and developmental research process for a new performance project premiering in 2024 at Mosaic Theater, Art of Care, a new production in development using the In Your Shoes methodology to premiere at Mosaic theater in DC, in partnership with Georgetown’s Global Health Institute, Medical Humanities Initiative, School of Health, and School of Nursing.

Participated in a collaborative project with undergraduate students from Patrick Henry College and Georgetown University. Its mission is to bring students of diverse backgrounds into dialogue with one another to promote mutual understanding, empathy, and respect.

Virtual Showcase 2021: Reflecting on January 6th, 2021

Lily and Ashanee 37-41; Inter-generational conversations: Other Bodies (Shiva and Ashanee) 48-57

Lannan Center In Your Shoes: This special program brings together students and members of the Georgetown community to explore American identity, in particular the gulf between professed values of democracy, freedom, and opportunity and the realities and reckonings that characterize our past and present.

Episode 1: “We were confronting each other and we were being brave”, In Your Shoes in conversation

BEECK CENTER FOR SOCIAL IMPACT AND INNOVATION

website and project designer

PROJECT BUILDER: A toolkit guiding students to craft an individualized social impact journey with their community at the wake of the pandemic