Cimientos (Spanish for "foundations") is a play development program run by NYC-based Latinx theater company IATI Theater. Since 2001, this program has showcased authors from around the world. However, in most recent years, the experience of working with playwrights from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Kenia, and Uganda has opened up the possibility of addressing playwriting as a deterritorialized praxis in which political, thematical, and historical discussions intertwine with shared aesthetics and new forms to understand theater in the Global South. In this workshop-seminar, students will analyze canonical texts and unpublished plays from contemporary authors based in the Global South to participate in the discussion of decolonizing playwriting. Students will analyze critical scholarship on the Global South to trace a contemporary South-South relationship within playwriting as a literary and political device. Authors from the Cimientos program will join the class as guest speakers to prompt students to develop creative writing techniques. Students will present a draft of a short play that integrates the material covered in class. |