The Justice and the Arts Initiative (JAI) cordially invites you, your colleagues and your students to our Fall Quarter Guest Artist Series to hear a talk by one of the theatre’s most profound thinkers, Erik Ehn. Newly appointed as director of Playwrighting at Brown University, and author of The Saint Plays, Ehn will be on campus for one evening only.
Mr. Ehn will discuss globalization from the point of view of justice and the arts, using examples from his collaborative work in Rwanda and Serbia. He will share insights on how the work of artist-activists is being charted and communicated in the Arts in the One World Conference he instigated, and finally will discuss his provocative collection of short plays each on the lives of a different saint, a project which now encompasses over one hundred plays. Santa Clara University’s Theatre and Dance Department will be producing a selection of seven of The Saint Plays in November. Mr. Ehn will focus on one particular work in the collection, “Una Carrona | Rose of Lima,” which deals with the tragedies experienced by those in El Salvador in 1989, events which the university community commemorates this fall with the Ignatian Center’s Legacy of the Martyrs event.
In his preface to The Saint Plays (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000) Ehn stresses the metaphysical merits of transformation and letting go, rather than stasis, control and the complacency those states imply. “Figures slip death to be always becoming; we are invited to project ourselves into their metahistorical uproar, their irresolvable complexity, their constant approach. …The subject matter is exploded biography, or the means by which the self is overmastered by acts of the imagination, by acts of faith.”
The event is free, but tickets are required. To make a reservation, please call the Mayer Theatre Box Office at 408-554-4015, or contact the Justice and the Arts Initiative at jai@scu.edu.
For further information on Erik Ehn please visit the campus calendar.
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