Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival

Arts and Human Rights Festivals Across Borders

Date and Time: Saturday 24 October 2020, 5pm Serbia Time and 4pm Irish time

Venue: Online Forum for Dialogue co-hosted by Dah Theatre, Belgrade, Serbia and Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality, Dublin, Ireland

Category: Online Forum for Discussion

Tickets: Open to the Public

Booking: Click Here

Moderator: Jadranka Andjelić, Dah Theatre, Serbia

Speakers: Dijana Milošević, Dah Theatre, Serbia; John Scott, Irish Modern Dance Theatre; Ray Yeates, Dublin City Arts Office; Jenny MacDonald, Creator and director of SoloSIRENs Festival, Mary Moynihan, writer, director, theatre and filmmaker, Artistic Director of Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality

Details

Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality, Dublin, Ireland and Dah Theatre Research Centre, Belgrade, Serbia are delighted to co-host a joint event linking two unique festivals across Europe – the Dublin Arts and Human Rights festival running from the 16 to the 25 October 2020 and the Serbia Festival of Arts and Human Rights running from the 23 to the 28 October 2020.

This event, titled The Artist Speaks: Festivals Across Borders Creative Conversations in Ireland and Serbia, is a cross-border creative conversation exploring links between the arts and human rights and why artists create work linked to human rights. The event features discussions with artists and cultural producers from Serbia and Ireland.

This event is co-hosted by Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality and DAH Theatre, Serbia, as part of the Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival 2020 and the Serbia Festival of Arts and Human Rights 2020.

The speakers are Dijana Milošević, a theatre director, co-founder and artistic director of DAH Theatre, Serbia; John Scott, Dancer, Choreographer, founder and Artistic Director of Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Ireland; Ray Yeates, Dublin City Arts Officer, Ireland; Jenny Macdonald, creator and director of SoloSIRENS Festival, Ireland and Mary Moynihan, writer, director, theatre and filmmaker, Artistic Director of Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality and co-curator of the Dublin Arts and Human Rights festival.

Dijana Milošević from Dah Theatre, speaks about the Serbia Festival of Arts and Human Rights, the work of DAH, and the role of arts and human rights in Serbia.

John Scott from Irish Modern Dance Theatre speaks about the role of dance in promoting human rights, on national and international levels, and the work of Irish Modern Dance Theatre in promoting human rights.

Ray Yeates, Arts Officer with Dublin City Council Arts Office speaks about the role of the arts to promote human rights at a community level, including the role of local authority arts offices. Ray will also discuss the importance of international creative connections at a local level in the promotion of Arts and Human Rights.

Jenny Macdonald, creator and director of SoloSIRENS Festival, Ireland speaks about the work of SoloSIRENS and will share and express the challenges facing women in the arts and society today, and how SoloSIRENS promotes diversity and gender equality in the arts.

Mary Moynihan, writer, theatre and film-maker and Artistic Director, Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality speaks about the work of Smashing Times to promote human rights through the arts on local, national and international levels, and on the Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival.

Biographies

Dijana Milošević Biography
Dijana Milošević is a theatre director, co-founder and artistic director of DAH Theatre In Belgrade, Serbia, the first theatre laboratory in her country. In addition to directing socially engaged theatre works of a high aesthetic quality, Dijana has worked on issues of violence against women with the activist group ‘Women in Black’, performing stories of women from Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia. Dijana runs the International Institute for Actors and Directors, writes articles about theatre, gives lectures and workshops and tours with her company worldwide. In 1992, Dijana co-founded ANET (The Association of Independent Theatre Groups in Belgrade) and the Natasha Project, an international theatre network. She collaborates with Acting Together on the World Stage, Theatre Without Borders and The Magdalena Project, an international network of women in contemporary theatre.
DAH Theatre is an experimental Serbian theatre group founded in 1991 by Jadranka Anđelić and Dijana Milošević, who had originally performed on the streets of Belgrade to protest against the government’s acts of aggression. It produces politically driven, movement- oriented works. In 2003 DAH Theatre enlarged its activities by founding DAH Theatre Research Centre (DTRC) to deliver an ongoing program of workshops, lectures, seminars, guest performances and festivals. The work of the Centre is aimed towards a constant exchange of knowledge, experience and ideas amongst artists and participants from various theatrical and national traditions.

Dah Theatre, Serbia
DAH Theatre is an independent, professional theatre company founded in 1991 in Belgrade, Serbia. It is a contemporary artistic collective that examines social issues built on the principle of social action and excellence in arts production and projects. The important objective is bringing the young people closer to modern theatre expression and arts related to theatre. In addition to conducting their own theatre research, DAH Theatre is also dedicated to a permanent exchange of knowledge, experience and opinions among artists and theatre professionals of different national and theatre traditions. With more than 45 theatre productions, ten European and twenty international collaborations and thirteen organized festivals, DAH Theatre is one of the most enduring and successful theatre companies in the region. We are members of many national and international theatre networks and we are collaborating with the most prestigious universities from all over the world. In 2016 the first book about DAH Theatre was published “DAH Theatre, A Sourcebook” – published by Lexington Books. THE DAH Theatre is included in the book The Twenty-First Century Performance Reader, published by Routledge, 2019.

John Scott, Artistic Director, Irish Modern Dance Theatre

John Scott is Artistic Director of Irish Modern Dance Theatre which was founded in 1991. The Dublin-based ensemble mixes virtuoso Irish and international dancers with African and Middle Eastern refugees and torture survivors. Scott has pioneered dance in Ireland, a country known more for its literary traditions and text based drama. His work is witty, theatrical with startling imagery and addresses ideas of diversity, love, metaphysics.

Jenny MacDonald, Writer, Performer, Director and Facilitator

Jenny Macdonald is a writer, performer, director and facilitator. Recent credits as director/performer This Was Never Going to Be Normal (Deirdre Murphy & Rebecca Reilly, Galway Theatre Festival)l; as director Can’t See the Woods for the Trees (Doors to Elsewhere Ensemble, Rua Red Gallery); and as performer Capitalism: The Musical! by Deirdre Murphy (Galway Theatre Festival, XM24 and Next Emerson, Italy). Her solo show Enthroned premiered at First Fortnight Festival and then in the New York International Fringe. She was a participant on Lead Role, a development programme for women artists (Theatre Forum and Kultur Vast, Sweden). She is an alumnus of Dublin Theatre Festival’s artist development programme, The Next Stage and an Associate Artist with Tallaght Community Arts.

Ray Yeates, Arts Officer, Dublin City Council Arts Office

Ray Yeates is the Arts Officer with Dublin City Council. He was formerly Artistic Director of Axis: Ballymun. An arts practitioner and manager of thirty years’ experience, his repertoire includes the critically acclaimed Axis production of Dermot Bolger’s The Parting Glass as part of the Imagine Festival at the Barrow Street Theatre in New York.

Mary Moynihan, Writer, Theatre and Film-Maker, Artistic Director Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality
Mary Moynihan is an award-winning writer, director, theatre and film-maker, Artistic Director of Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality, and a Theatre Lecturer at the TU Dublin Conservatoire. As Artistic Director of Smashing Times, Mary specialises in using interdisciplinary arts practice to promote human rights, peace building, gender equality and positive mental health, developing cutting edge arts-based projects with a range of organisations in Ireland, Northern Ireland and across Europe.
Award-winning projects include Acting for the Future, which uses theatre to promote positive mental health and well-being, run in partnership with the Samaritans, and the highly successful Women War and Peace, using theatre and film to promote equality and peace. As playwright, Mary’s work includes the highly acclaimed The Woman is Present: Women’s Stories of WWII co-written with Paul Kennedy, Fiona Bawn Thompson, and Féilim James; In One Breath from the award-winning Testimonies and Constance and Her Friends, selected by President Michael D. Higgins for performance at Áras an Uachtaráin for Culture Night 2016.
Credits for theatre director include The Woman is Present: Women’s Stories of WWII on Irish and international tour; A Midsummer Night’s Dream scenes for the Abbey Theatre; Uprising and Thou Shalt Not Kill at Project Arts and on national tour; and Romeo and Juliet, Samuel Beckett Theatre.
Mary’s film work includes the hour-long television documentary Stories from the Shadows, the short film Tell Them Our Names, inspired by women’s stories of WWII and selected for the London Eye International Film Festival and the Kerry Film Festival, the creative documentary Women in an Equal Europe, a short film Courageous Women inspired by women’s stories from the 1916 to 1923 period in Irish history; and Humanity in the Ruins, a film inspired by stories of artists and activists who stood up against Fascism.
Mary is artistic curator for the Dublin Arts and Human Rights festival. The aim of the festival is to showcase and highlight the extraordinary work of human rights defenders in Ireland and around the world, past and present, and the role of the arts and artists in promoting human rights today and to create a space to share, celebrate, remember and promote the arts for human rights. We want to bring together artists, activists, communities, citizens, families and all those interested in using the arts to promote and celebrate human rights and equality for all.
Mary has an honours MA in Film Production and an honours BA in Drama and Theatre Studies from Trinity College. Mary originally trained at Focus Theatre under the direction of Deirdre O’Connell, her friend and mentor. Mary’s creative work focuses on primal, visceral and intuitive responses to vulnerability and conflict and an exploration of self and the other.
Mary is particularly proud to have been associated with the Elephant Collective and the outstanding work of Dr Jo Murphy Lawless, author and former Trinity Lecturer, who was instrumental in having legislation passed in 2019 making inquests mandatory in all cases of maternal death. Speaking in the Dáil Clare Daly TD said ‘we are here for all women whose names we do not know and for whom no inquest was ever held’. One of those women whose names were read out in the Dáil was Mary’s Mary’s mother Helen Moynihan who died in 1981, aged 39.

The Artist Speaks: Festivals Across Borders Creative Conversations In Ireland and Serbia