Performance as Change

Is there a contradiction between performance as entertainment, performance that is essentially an esthétique of form, beauty and years of extraordinary cultivation of skills, and performance that is by itself an act of change, designed to disturb? For a moment, […]

Special Report

L’art qui brise le non-dit

Koulsy Lamko

Writer, performer and griot Koulsy Lamko directed the Centre Universitaire des Arts in Rwanda from 1999 to 2002, in the aftermath of the genocide of the Tutsis. After handing the project over to students, he continued to support and visit […]

Commentary

Performance for Empowerment

Rahul Varma

Teesri Duniya Theatre was established in 1981 by Rana Bose and me as co-founders. Others involved were the cast and crew of the company’s launch production, Badal Sircar’s Julus. At the time, there was no other South Asian theatre company […]

Art

L’art comme vecteur de changement social: Entretien Stanley Février

Stanley Février

Stanley Février’s art gets under your skin. It calls you and keeps calling. It engages more of you than you know. Heart and mind and spirit remember. Flesh remembers. You feel the expanse, the height, the depth. The […]

Poetry

A Post-Modern Hell

Jan Jorgensen

1. Circumstance and sorrow had aged me by the time I found my way into the fire-blighted wood scorched by flames rising up from an earth ravaged by explorations for oil, its water table plundered relentlessly by impulses […]

Film Review

Quentura

Maya Khankhoje

The 29th edition of the Montréal First Peoples Festival (Présence autochtone) unfolded from August 6 to August 14. On this occasion, it celebrated diversity and creativity through a combination of visual arts, film, music, song, poetry and gastronomy. It […]

Interview

Taking audiences out of their comfort zone

Rana Bose

Montréal actor Howard Rosenstein in conversation with Serai’s Rana Bose Serai: Good afternoon, Howard! The theme of this issue is Performance as Change. I will begin, though, with a slight diversion. I’ve come across your opinion on […]

Poetry Review

What We Remember: Poetry that Reframes History

Blossom Thom

What We Remember: Poetry that Reframes History Lisa Bird-Wilson combines two forms of remembering in The Red Files. Her poems mix archival sources with oral history to reconstruct the stories we tell about the residential school system and its […]

Poetry

Because I am my own

Dipti Gupta

I am nobody else’s version of who I am You cannot set your mind based on my looks alone There is no language that defines me Do not box me in Because I am my own I choose not to be enslaved […]

Book Review

Run J Run

Himmat Singh Shinhat

Run J Run, Sokol’s latest novel, was published in May this year by Renaissance Press, a publishing company whose roster features writing that doesn’t fit into a standard genre, niche or demographic and which hopes to uplift marginalized […]

Tribute

A Magical Experience

Dipti Gupta

Sometimes it takes just a moment to realize that one is in the presence of greatness. Meeting Habib Tanvir was one such moment. In 1992, I went to India to visit my parents. My husband Rahul Varma, who runs Teesri […]