ARTISTIC CONGRESS
- Oct 25 - Oct 27 2024
- Long Wharf Theatre @ Yale Schwarzman Center
Event description
Definition: con·gress /ˈkäNGɡrəs/ the action of coming together.
Pricing note: There are two ways to visit the Artistic Congress.
1) Purchase a weekend pass for $126. Each event breaks down to $11.45.
2) Long Wharf Theatre always strives to make our programming accessible. Each individual event at the Artistic Congress is also open to a Pay What You Can ticket.
*Yale Drama Reading of this dry spell is free.
Join Us for Long Wharf Theatre’s Artistic Congress
In partnership with Yale Schwarzman Center, Long Wharf Theatre invites you to a weekend dedicated to exploring why theatre is vital to a thriving democracy. This conference-style event will feature artists, scholars, and community members coming together to discuss the powerful connection between creativity and civic engagement.
The weekend begins with an artistic opening and breaking of bread, followed by interactive sessions on how artistic practices build bridges in civic spaces, elevate community stories, and inspire positive change. Through dialogue and collaboration, we’ll examine how theatre humanizes and serves as a tool for social progress, particularly in this pivotal time for our democracy.
Getting here
What to expect at this show
Weekend passes are available for $126, and single tickets for sessions are Pay What You Can.
Duration
This event takes place over the whole weekend, across various sessions and venues.
Age guidance
13+
Pricing
Buy from $126.00
Featured events
IN REAL TIME HOSTED BY CT PUBLIC
- Oct 26 2024, 9:30am
- Yale Schwarzman Center: President’s Room
- Wheelchair accessible. More accessibility information
KEYNOTE CONVERSATION: ANNA DEAVERE SMITH WITH DR. KHALILAH BROWN-DEAN
- Oct 26 2024, 7:30pm
- Long Wharf Theatre @ Yale University Art Gallery
Hospitality options
To commemorate the Congress, the New Haven Hotel will be sponsoring the event and making it so that Congress guests can explore all that New Haven has to offer at a discounted rate.
Friday, October 25
Saturday, October 26
Sunday, October 27
Long Wharf in Your Neighborhood
Experience New Work
This Ghost of Slavery: A Play of Past and Present
Immediately following the Artistic Congress Finale, Wesleyan University's Center for the Arts (CFA) will present the first public staged reading of Anna Deavere Smith's "This Ghost of Slavery: A Play of Past and Present," published in The Atlantic in 2023. Co-produced with the Long Wharf Theatre, the staged reading will take place on Sunday, October 27, 2024 at 3pm in Crowell Concert Hall, located on Wesleyan's campus at 50 Wyllys Avenue in Middletown, Connecticut. The event is co-sponsored by Wesleyan's Center for the Humanities and presented as part of the University initiative Democracy 2024.
More About This Ghost of Slavery
With her newest play, Smith combines her signature interview-based documentary theater with research into the archives of American slavery. Exploring the deep roots of historical trauma as it persists in the present, the play also considers how performance might provide new ways of understanding the collective stories we tell ourselves as individuals and as a nation.
Set in Baltimore and Annapolis, the story is set within a college campus and moves between the 1860s and the present as actors play multiple roles. Drawing from interviews with social justice workers associated with the nonprofit organization Chicago CRED (Create Real Economic Destiny), which seeks to reduce gun violence and help young people ensnared in gangs or the juvenile justice system, Smith weaves these contemporary voices with primary research in 19th-century archives, transcripts, and diaries (especially on “apprenticeship laws”) to extend her examination of the school-to-prison pipeline to the long legacy of American slavery.
Performed by a cast that includes professional actors and Wesleyan undergraduate artists, the staged reading will be followed by a discussion. This event marks the first in a series of engagements that Smith, the 2024–2025 Artist in Residence at Wesleyan University's Center for the Arts, is devising with the CFA to further examine performance as a way of knowing.
Tickets for the staged reading are $20 for the general public; $15 for senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, and non-Wesleyan students; and $8 for Wesleyan students and youth under 18.