Cross-Cultural Dialogue through the Arts, develops and creates collaborations betweeen disparate communities. Conceived and directed by Judith Sloan, Cross-Cultural Dialogue Through the Arts (CCDTA) is a training and mentorship program for high school students to work under the direction of professional artists. The program offers a unique hands-on opportunity for graduate and undergraduate college students to work in teams as mentors and performance collaborators with new immigrant teenagers through a multi-media arts and theatre project at the International High School at LaGuardia Community College in Queens. Students from 50 different countries, speaking almost as many languages and dialects, populate the international high school. A sister project to Crossing the BLVD, (CCDTA) is currently avialable to all New York City area college students to participate as interns. In additional to classroom visits with individual teachers, Sloan has developed a focused weekly workshop, Transforming Trauma into Art providing theatre, writing and music training for teenagers from war-zones or who have been displaced due to economic or natural disastgers. The dialogue and writing classes culminate in EarSay's public performances in the spring. College students receive training in theatre, writing, oral history, community organizing, interviewing techniques, performance and documentary art. High School students benefit from the mentorship process. This unique collaboration across cultures also gives immigrant teenagers exposure to a world of higher education which is often closed to them. Theatre exercises in improvisation, characterization, humor, storytelling, and conflict resolution are used to develop monologues and scenes. All participants form creative teams to produce and document the final performances and public dialogues. The workshops take place in a theatre at La Guardia Community College in Queens. For young people interested in performing and multi-media arts as well as human rights and community organizing. The spring 2009 semester is being led by Judith Sloan and hip hop musician and producer Chenits Pettigrew (CHEN LO) and drummer and percussionist Ken White.

Cross-Cultural Dialogue Through the Arts is a partnership between EarSay, the International High School at LaGuardia Community College, and the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center. The project currently receives partial funding from the New York State Council on the Arts. For the first 9 years, CCDTA has been funded by the Independence Community Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Center for Arts Education, the Laura B. Vogel Foundation, Citibank, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University, and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

THE PROJECT IS FACING SEVERE FUNDING SHORTAGE FOR THE SPRING AND FALL 2009. IF YOU OR ANYONE YOU KNOW WOULD LIKE TO SUPPORT THE PROJECT, ALL DONATIONS ARE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE AND WILL GO TO FURTHER THE ARTISTIC EDUCATION OF FUTURE GENERATIONS!

Contact: info@earsay.org

In this slide lecture presentation, Warren Lehrer discusses his own work in relation to other works of visual literature from cave paintings, illuminated manuscripts and comic books - to the burgeoning field of artists' books, public textworks and interactive hypertexts. Lehrer expounds on his obsession with capturing the shape of thought and reuniting the pictorial and oral roots of storytelling with the printed word, as well as his pilgrimage with language through art, music and theater into literature. As part of the lecture he performs excerpts from selected books and scores. Geared primarily for colleges, art schools, arts organizations, audiences of artists, designers, writers, readers and educators. A lecture presentation can also be combined with a Crossing the BLVD or Portrait Series performance, and/or workshops. Workshops include:

• Scoring from Life: Typographic/Writing workshop
• Writing and Designing the Visual Book
• Object/Text - Text/Object
• Writing from the Inside Out - Personal Narrative Into Art

Booking Contact: info@earsay.org

Judith Sloan presents a lecture demonstration looking at ethics and politics in performance and expressive documentary projects that use oral history as source material. Questions of who owns a story, responsibility of the author/artist to the subject, ethical decisions involved in using "real" peopleÕs stories. A look at oral history projects in theatre, film, books and radio and how those projects impact the lives of the subjects as well as the artists. Sloan performs excerpts from EarSay projects and discusses the work of Studs Terkel, Anna Deveare Smith, Dave Isay among others. Geared primarily for universities, theatre programs, audiences of documentary artists, writers, actors, educators. A lecture presentation can also be combined with a Crossing the BLVD performance.

Booking Contact: info@earsay.org