Arizona State University will host the sixth annual NoPassportTheatre Conference, “Dreaming the Americas,” which is an event meant to break down borders of the mind.

The title of NoPassport’s 2012 conference is “Re:Connecting –Translocalities in Performance.” The event’s focus is movements of peoples and ideas over borders. Plays, performances and discussions will be used to examine this theme.

For the past five years, the conference has taken place in New York.NoPassport will host this year’s conference at ASU to analyze Arizona’s issues with physical and metaphorical borders, said Tamara Underiner, the program director of the Theater and Performance of the Americas at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

As a member of NoPassport, Underiner said she attended the past five conferences. Although it went well on the East Coast, Underiner said she wanted to bring the event to Arizona. She said she worked closely with fellow co-planner Micah Espinoza to make that happen for her own benefit as well as that of her students.

“It’s the perfect link for our students to meet the real people we’re studying,” Underiner said. “It’s hugely good for theprogram.”

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In one sense, new plays are old news in Austin. Local theatre companies have been spotlighting work by hometown playwrights for more than 30 years, and for half that time, new plays have constituted more than a quarter of the work produced on area stages every year. However, when you consider that only a small fraction of those Austin originals have come from writers of color and that Teatro Vivo – one of a handful of companies that consistently mount new works by Latino writers – only launched its festival devoted to such writers last year and that that inaugural festival attracted standing-room-only crowds to its staged readings of three plays, well, it’s clear that new plays are still making news here.

This weekend, Teatro Vivo follows up on that initial success with another trio of dramas fresh from the keyboards of Latino playwrights. For the second round, Artistic Director Rupert Reyes sought scripts from beyond the state’s borders as well as inside them and made room specifically for younger voices. As a result, this festival includes work by a University of Texas student, Arthur Marroquin, and a nationally prominent writer known to local audiences: Caridad Svich, who’s had three plays staged by Salvage Vanguard Theater.

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Teatro Vivo in conjunction with the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center and ScriptWorks will present the Austin Latino New Play Festival April 5 – 7, 2012. This second annual festival will showcase staged readings of three new plays (one per evening). The plays chosen this year from submissions are Guapa by Caridad Svich, Cura by Raul Garza and Rosalia by Arthur Marroquin.

Where do you look for inspiration?
Politics, poetry, music, film, literature and human experience

What’s your favorite book / movie / line from a play / pop culture guilty pleasure / cocktail?
Too many favorites but among them in random order are the films – Terence Malick’sDays of Heaven, Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine, Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, Allison Anders’ Gas Food Lodging, Jane Campion’s Bright Star, and Sidney Lumet’sDog Day Afternoon.

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http://www.centromori.cl/noticias/teatro/2012/01/la-casa-de-los-espiritus-mori-plaza-vespucio-abre-sus-puertas-con-gran-produccion-nacional-2/

THE WAY OF WATER
a new play by Caridad Svich

directed by Jose Zayas
dramaturg: Heather Helinsky

February 16, 2012 at 2 PM.
This reading is by invitation only,
and not open to the general public.

The Way of Water is a play that pits the BP oil spill next to the lives of those affected by it. It’s a story about four people making do as best they can, living their lives, and just trying to stay afloat in the land of many compromised dreams, as the devastation of a to-this-day mostly under-reported health crisis scandal in the Gulf is played out on a human scale. It’s a play about poverty in America, rumors and truth, what is said and what gets written, and the quest for an honorable life.

The Way of Water was developed at the Winter Writers Retreat at the Lark Play Development Center in New York City.

MAGNIFICENT WASTE
by Caridad Svich

http://www.indietheaternow.com/Play/PlayDetail/285