Leadership. Is everything. This is what Dione Joseph is about, and she brings the circle of an incredible empowerment to any work she engages in; it is my best good fortune that she is the director of AMERICA REX, in which -"doing difference differently", is crucial. The paradigm of the effort is in the confluence of experience that Dione was already moving through, and into her work on our collaboration in standing up America Rex in Auckland, NZ. The fuller treaties & theory on this new tact of dramaturgy, meant to scaffold experiencing new ways of discerning what is being seen onstage, and not to -as audience- flip into default viewing of 'new things', was presented in an article in Te Kaharoa (pdf available), which is an open access, multi-disciplinary, refereed, electronic journal with a focus on indigenous issues in the Pacific region. It is supported by Te Ara Poutama – the Faculty of Māori and Indigenous Development – at AUT University. [It accepts but is not limited to articles dealing with language, culture, art, history, anthropology, development studies, and other disciplines associated with the indigenous peoples of the Pacific.] In the knit of this way of thinking.. ..threads out of New Zealand brought me to an incredible moment of synchronicity; I have been invited to The Gathering, which is being hosted by The Lab next week. While the sessions are by invitation only, they will be live-streamed to the public via HowlRound Theatre Commons. ..and this coalition of global conversations in the arts is another essential ingredient in "doing difference differently".
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