Introducing CrossCurrents

Playwright Ebru Nihan Celkin once described the theater as “a place of encounters”. Since our inception, PlayCo has been a nexus for artists from all around the world to encounter one another and exchange ideas, insights, and inspiration borne from their unique lived experiences. The world has changed a lot since 1999, and our increased ability to connect over vast distances empowers us, more potently than ever, to be a place of intellectual, emotional, and artistic growth and expansion.

This is also a scary time to be an artist, especially for those who are engaging with complex ideas and critiquing systems of power in a public forum. As more channels of communication become available to us, we also risk stagnation as constant geopolitical, economic, and social upheaval force us to prioritize survival and constantly reevaluate who we are to one another–as individual artists and citizens, and as a community bound by our craft.

Just in time for our twenty-fifth turn around the sun, we proudly introduce CROSSCURRENTS on The Hub, a series of essays we are commissioning from our accomplished community of artists from around the world, inviting them to their insights on the artistic practices and state of the field wherever they call home.

Our inaugural Crosscurrents contributor-at-large is Katlego Kai Kolanyane-Kesupile, an extraordinary artist, scholar, and activist from Botswana. We got to know Kat through her participation in our virtual Black Women Theatre Makers residency, which we held in summer 2021 while the world was still in lockdown. During this residency, which connected four artists based in Botswana, Switzerland, Brazil, and the United States, each artist was given time and resources to develop a project of their choosing, and to meet regularly as a cohort to exchange ideas and support one another. Kat’s project was Meriti, a community-based theatrical exploration of grief in both English and Setswana that employed Afrofuturism and absurdism as formal and thematic touchstones.

Over the next few months, Kat will be a regular contributor to The Hub, writing essays about the development of Botswana’s theatre identity through place, practice, form, and culture. Our hope for this series is that in a small but meaningful way, platforming artists on The Hub and giving them the space and resources to explore the aspects of theatre most critical to their work in the context of their own lives can inspire curiosity and reflection in ours.

If you find an idea or experience from a CrossCurrents feature particularly thought-provoking, please feel free to share your thoughts with me at awang@playco.org!