Being a Citizen

Staging Moroccan Power

[excerpted from John W. Erwin, Virtuoso Citizens – a book to be completed during 2012] i. What politics can be like Morocco has as its center of gravity the amphitheatre of planes and plateaus which climbs in steps from the Atlantic coast to the arc of mountain ranges which hem it into a semi-circle from the Tintgitane peninsula to […]

To improve the conditions of living in these parts– it works both ways

President Roosevelt Invites Future King Mohammed V to Dinner at SYMBOL [ excerpts from John W. Erwin, Virtuoso Citizens (a book to be completed during 2012)]   βάλλω [ballo] to throw, cast, hurl at, properly of a missile… to strike… συμβάλλω [symballo] to throw or dash together …  to bring men together, match them to fight σύμβολον [symbolon] […]

To Let the Young and the Old, the Past and the Future Meet and Discuss

A Ben M’sik and Tangier Stories Exchange Project Stories Exchange Project Morocco is working to help realize the potential for social and economic development in an historic linking voiced on June 17, 2011 by His Majesty Mohammed VI. “Constitutionalizing the Amazigh [Berber] language as an official language of the Kingdom alongside Arabic,” the King recognized the […]

Home-Grown Alternatives to Terror and War

A Ben M’sik and Tangier Stories Exchange Project The Prague-based first round of the Stories Exchange Project (www.stories-exchange.org) was about learning to live with cultural differences. The Project focused primarily on building better relations today among members of the Romani (Gypsy) minority and the Czech majority. Our work with leaders and members of the Czech Jewish […]

Vaclav Havel Did Not Die Today

18 December 2011 “Historical experience teaches us that any genuinely meaningful point of departure in an individual’s life usually has an element of universality about it. In other words, it is not something partial, accessible only to a restricted community, and not transferable to any other. On the contrary it must be potentially accessible to everyone; […]

Translating Atlas

Translating Atlas

Presented in Tangier, Morocco on June 5, 2011 at ICPS annual international conference “Intermediality and Theatre” Writing from London on one of its greyer and definitely less swinging days, I have to envy your being in bright, colorful Tangier. There you are, scanning intersections between theater and new media near the geopolitically crucial meeting-point of the […]

Stories Exchange Project Morocco

I. Introduction Stories Exchange Project Morocco will apply the rich and diverse traditions of Moroccan storytelling to participants’ everyday experience, enabling them to respond actively and creatively to new opportunities for personal, social, economic, and political development. The project will be organized by the Rabat-based non-governmental organization SEP Maroc in cooperation with the Fund for New […]

What Politics Can Be Like: King Hassan II in Tangier

Mitchell ChanelisDirector, Project DevelopmentThe Fund for New Performance/VideoIt was in 1964. I had planned to leave Tangier days before, but people I knew said, ‘No, you have to wait, you have to wait: the sultan’s coming.’ There are rumors he was going to be assassinated and everybody was on tenterhooks. So I was in the […]

It is not possible to arrest a person because of his physical appearance

[This is a transcription of a sequence in a videotape shot in the police station in Terezin, Czech Republic on 18 September 2000 during the Stories Exchange Project workshop ARTS OF TOLERANCE. It is included in the second video documentary about the project: "MY WAY AND HIS WAY: The Stories Exchange Project”]Cenek RuzickaDirector Romany Holocaust […]

How can Roms have a white tent?

"New Roles for Roma in an Integrated Europe?”Session III, ARTS OF TOLERANCEDiscussions, Workshops and Performances organized by the Stories Exchange Project in Terezin, formerly a Nazi concentration camp from which Jews were sent to Auschwitz Eva BajgerovaUsti nad LabemRomany AssistantRegional GovernmentLocal CoordinatorThe Stories Exchange Project What has the Stories Exchange Project meant for our region? […]