FESTIVAL UNBOUND

Writing the Stories We Need: A Workshop Inspired by Rebekah Taussig’s Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Body

How does finding words for our life challenges hearten us and connect us to each other? What experiences that you know firsthand do you long to hear stories about? What could you write to be more seen for all you are?

Spring-boarding from Rebekah Taussig’s memoir of her body, which, she writes, “looks and moves different from most,” participants will share and write about their lived experiences that need to be more known in the world at large. This four-session workshop will take place mid-March to Mid-April at the Bethlehem Area Public Library and end with a sharing of what we have made. The workshop will be facilitated by renowned author, Jan Cohen-Cruz, in collaboration with two guest artists, Harry Mann and Peggy Pettit. To know more, contact Jan at jcohencruz@gmail.com.

Jan Cohen-Cruz earned her PhD at NYU Performance Studies and was a professor in the NYU Drama Department for 28 years, initiating a minor in applied theater. She has designed and taught numerous courses and programs, both alone and in partnership with other scholars and artists, most extensively at New York University and Syracuse University. She instituted numerous cross-university partnerships while director of the national organization Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, as well as in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. She was the first recipient of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts David Payne Carter Award for Great Teaching. In 2012, she received the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Award for Leadership in Community-Based Theatre and Civic Engagement. Jan is an experienced workshop facilitator, focusing on applied theater and creative writing practices. Her hands-on approach to the evaluation of artistic projects, initially developed as the evaluator of smART Power, a State Department initiative designed by the Bronx Museum, involves input from the multiple sectors of participants involved in a project. Reflecting her PhD in Performance Studies (NYU), Jan brings attention to the many ways that art manifests in the world, exemplified by her work with Pam Korza on the municipal-artist website. Her current focus is the arts and life transitions.

Harry Mann has performed as a musician, actor, dancer, and performance artist. He has composed and performed in collaborations with theater artists Joseph Chaikin, The Talking Band, and Anne Bogart and music artist Cecil Taylor, among many others.  He has been part of the jazz duo “Gorilla My Love” with Neal Kirkwood since the 1970s.  Harry has performed with Touchstone Theater including in Prometheus Redux and with Jan Cohen-Cruz’s prior writing workshop as part of Festival Unbound.

Peggy Pettitt is a recipient of the New York City Arts-In-Education Roundtable Award for Sustained Achievement in Theatre and numerous other fellowships and awards, including the National Endowment for the Arts and Fulbright Scholarship. A longtime adjunct professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, she has taught and continues to teach storytelling workshops nationally and internationally, and founded the elder storytelling ensemble, ‘The Pearls of Wisdom’.

[Image description: A group of people sit around a table, focused on something in the middle. The person most in focus, on the left side of the image has their hands on top of some sort of board game/donut shaped thing. The whole scene is bathed in a wonderful purple light. In the background we can see many other (out of focus) people who all appear to be sitting in similar groups.]