The Foundry Theatre is bringing people to NYC from all over the world – people who are living and working within alternative practices of economics, safety, media/ communications, politics and more.

Join them for a kind of ‘there-are-other-ways-to-do-things’ show & tell featuring these remarkable local, national and international innovators.

Reservations/tickets available here.

Here’s the email I got from Melanie:

To my beloved friends and colleagues who make things,

I write to ask that you come to all or part of this weekend-long event we’re hosting at Cooper Union over the weekend of April 20-22 (Fri night and Sat & Sun afternoons). If nothing else, don’t miss Fri night/Grace Lee Boggs!

As most of you all know, we’re always experimenting with different sorts of events where artists might find meaningful exchange with people outside of our own community and practice – both as a way to assert our presence and significance in building the world AND hopefully to widen our access as a community to some of the amazing things going on outside our rehearsal rooms.

This time we’ve invited some insanely creative people to come to NYC from all over the world — South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, the USA etc — for a kind of Tedtalks/there-are-other-ways-of-making-the-world show & tell about the ways they are creating/living/working in innovative, alternative systems that change the way the world works. While these practices are proliferating widely across the globe, there’s barely a language for what they are or how they’re connected. They’re primarily framed as a kind of ‘visionary activism’, distinct from or even instead of protest politics (academics refer to them as “prefigurative’ practices.) I think ‘activism’ is only one of its frames; on a deeper level it’s simply people who are creating and experimenting with new forms of transformation, which is why I’m inviting you to be part of this conversation. This is another community of makers with whom we might share some interesting perspectives.

There’s an interesting language to be developed between those of us who create art and those who are creating these innovative structures. We both live in the ambiguity of creation, of not knowing but proceeding anyway. I wonder if we might be a kind of first circle’ to engage the depth and complexity of these processes. In fact I think many of the guests who are coming decided to do so because a theatre company invited them, because they want to speak about their work with other people who are creatively engaged with making things. So we’ve structured the breakout sessions on Sat and Sun to include artists as respondents and we’ve left lots of space for our ensuing conversations.

Finally, because we, as community of artists, are ultimately driven and inspired by each other, and because we’re so rarely together as a community, it would be a pleasure to share this experience with you all. I hope to see you there – thousands of you. Please pass this invite along to everyone I’ve never met. All info is below

Yours in love and inquiry,

xMelanie