Sarah Ashford Hart

I directed an ensemble creation class on participatory theatre in social contexts at the Pontifical Javeriana University in Bogotá, Colombia from January to May, 2022, in which we created an interactive performance as a collaboration between undergraduate students and women whose loved ones were murdered or disappeared as part of Colombia’s armed conflict. We explored interactive techniques to listen from the body to the testimonial performances of these victims/survivors, responding together and reflecting on our own memories and shared history.

Our devised performance was a face-to-face encounter that invited active participation, asking audiences to feel how everyone is affected by and affects violence and indifference in Colombia. This piece wove a participatory tapestry of collective memory in which radical love could unite all those involved, to catalyze social and somatic transformations.