Acting Together Ii: Performance And The Creative Transformation Of Conflict: Building Just And Inclusive Communities

Acting Together: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict is a two-volume work describing peacebuilding performances in regions beset by violence and internal conflicts. Whereas Volume I, Resistance and Reconciliation in Regions of Violence, emphasizes the role theatre and ritual play both in the midst and in the aftermath of direct violence, Volume II, Building Just and Inclusive Communities, focuses on the transformative power of performance in regions fractured by "subtler" forms of structural violence and social exclusion.

The case studies in this volume document examples from Afghanistan, Australia, Ghana, the Netherlands, South Africa, and the United States. This volume also offers resources, tools, and recommendations to help educators, artists, students, policymakers, and funders alike to become involved with, and contribute to, the emerging field of peacebuilding performance.

The Acting Together project documents how divided communities in conflict regions across the globe draw on the power of performance to express silenced truths, rebuild severed relationships, and work toward justice. Born in 2005 of a partnership between the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life at Brandeis University and Theatre Without Borders, the project grew to include the two-volume anthology Acting Together, the feature-length documentary film Acting Together on the World Stage, a website of related materials, and a toolkit, or "Tools for Continuing the Conversation," included with the documentary as a second disc and featuring practical guidelines and templates for further action.

Taken together, these resources yield rich case studies, theoretical frameworks, and recommendations to help practitioners, educators, students, and policymakers understand and strengthen the emerging field of peacebuilding performance.