I work to create a space that de-mechanizes the mind; a space where we can move from one identity to another and realize the full potential of becoming; a space where we emerge from our daily masks and shake loose the numbing fear of isolation; a space where we can reconnect the body and the imagination and breathe deeply into the trauma trapped in our hips; a space where we rehearse revolution, compromise, rage, tolerance, strength and vulnerability.
Mauricio Salgado, Shawn Fleek, Manisha Desai, Elaine Webster, Jeremy Perelman, Jonathan Rowson, Mara Ntona, and Michelle Lobo, were awarded a grant by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and the Future of Human Rights Governance (FORGE) program at New York University School of Law to begin phase one of their Experiment for Change titled: Cosmo-Local, Intergenerational Knowledge Celebrating Care-Centered Societies. This will be an intergenerational, cultural, and narrative intervention on two to three continents. Facilitated at the local scale, the experiment will achieve a groundswell of interest in a re-interpretation of human rights and environmental justice guided by our project values of de-growth, post-capitalism, care-centered societies, and nature-centered worldviews.
website: https://forge-program.com/
Creativity is a fundamental human activity and a powerful resource for individual and community health and care. Arts practitioners of all disciplines, throughout major global crises including the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, and ongoing forced displacement, offer particular pathways to creativity, adaptability, insight, meaning-making, and revitalization. The World Health Organizations Resource on Arts Practice and the Ethics of Care offers questions to consider in creative projects within communities where care is an identified concern as well as strategies to support arts practitioners in caring for their own health and wellbeing.
Mauricio Tafur Salgado and Dr. Nisha Sajnani are the project leads for this resource guide; Charanya R is the project coordinator; Libby Mislan and Kimberly Scott are the lead researchers, and Den is the web designer. The projects co-authors are: Kunle Adewale (Nigeria), Pachaya Akkapram (Thailand), Hector Aristizabal (Colombia), Ty Defoe (Oneida/Anishinaabe), Ellada Evangelou (Cyprus). Julia Puebla Fortier (UK). Maitri Gopalakrishna (India). Anita Jensen (Sweden). Scotia Monkivitch (Australia). Molly Mullen (Aotearoa New Zealand). Lisa Ndejuru (Rwanda and Canada). Benoit Ngabonzinza (Rwanda). and Dolina Wehipeihana (Aotearoa New Zealand)
www.withcare.art
This untitled work has been in development since 2018 and has been in residency at Trinity Rep in Providence and Arts on Site in New York. The lead collaborators are Mauricio Tafur Salgado, An-lin Dauber, Josiah Davis, and Chelsea Ainsworth. The work is exploring fragmented memories, inherited recipes, disintegrating records, trapped cyclops’s, and nightmare episodes of Iron Chef. The next workshop is in May of 2024 and they expect to have a run of the piece in 2025.
artEquity offers training and consulting services to individuals and organizations on creating and sustaining a culture of equity and inclusion through the arts and culture. Training topics address structural and systemic issues of identity, power-sharing language and communication, team building, and strategies to initiate and normalize equity-based approaches in organizational and community culture.
Mauricio has been a core facilitator with artEquity since the summer of 2018. He has also been a contributor for the BIPOC Surviving Predominantly White Institutions Series. The Black, Indigenous, People of Color Surviving Predominantly White Institution Series is a multi-part webinar designed to share strategies for interfacing with white leadership; what to do when sh*t goes down; how to navigate white women and their tears; how to cultivate BIPOC solidarity; and how to know when it’s time to go.
Mauricio has also been a co-leader of artEquity’s Artist + Activist Community Fund. As a response to the pandemic and in collaboration with an angel donor, artEquity organized community-giving fund that supports the artEquity community and the communities they are supporting and organizing. Since its creation, AACF has supported 172 artEquity alums, representing all five National Facilitator cohorts, and 246 emergency funds, organizations and individuals recommended by artEquity alumni and staff, totaling over $890,000. To view the impact of the fund, check out this link: https://www.artequity.org/aacf-demographics.
Mauricio is now collaborating with Shaminda Amarakoon, Yale Faculty and Chair of the Technical Design and Production, to develop a faculty/administrator working group that encourages long term strategic planning and short term problem solving for those of us fostering belonging in academic arts programs.
For more information, check out www.artequity.org
Mauricio is an Assistant Arts Professor in the department of Undergraduate Drama where he teaches Introduction to Theatre Studies, Climate Action and Research Theatre and the Cultivating Change Makers Lab. He has also co-taught Approaching Indigenous Theater through the works of Hanay Geiogamah, Tomson Highway, Spiderwoman Theater Company and Larissa Fasthorse. He co-created and co-teaches this course with Emily Preis.
Mauricio currently serves as the Director of Applied Theater where he oversees the Applied Theater Minor and he is the Associate Chair for the department where he focuses on cultivating belonging in the department through restorative practices.
In the Spring of 2023, Mauricio curated the Festival of Voices for the Drama department. The Festival featured new works by the Verbatim Performance Lab; a collaboration between Kirya Traber and Alicia Morales; a workshop of DonkeySaddle Projects’ Yo Te Esperaba: A Crimmigration Story, and a workshop of a new piece by the Arts and Culture Branch of the Poor People’s Campaign about Movement Songbook.
Lake Lucille Chekhov The Cherry Orchard Experiment
Directed by Brian Mertes and Melissa Kievman
Produced by Wendy Van Den Heuvel
Founded by Melissa Kievman and Brian Mertes in 2003 the Lake Lucille project was conceived as an exercise in the transformation of space: living space, working space, community space, performance space, and psychological space. Premising their idea of building theatrical processes outside of delineated theater spaces, Brian and Melissa hypothesized that breaking down conventional barriers between work life and home life could expand performers and audience members into new levels of expressive engagement. By reframing their Rockland County home as a rehearsal room, as a community center, as a gathering place, as a performance venue, as a site for large-scale social reflection, they managed to keep artists and neighbors in a liminal headspace that blends working and living seamlessly. After seven seasons of practice, Brian and Melissa's Lucille Project has nurtured a work method that dissolves differentiations between the artist and the community, between performer and audience. Between the dancer and the dance.
Mauricio has been a member of the company since 2007, serving as line producer and performer.