Juntos Acknowledged by NGO Committee on the Status of Women/New York. Number Three on the Playbill

P    L    A    Y    B    I    L    L 

The NGO Committee on the Status of Women/New York wishes to thank the talented artists, writers, performers and musicians who volunteered their time and efforts at the Forum. We applaud their generous spirit and dedication to bringing cultural messages of gender equality, development and peace.

(in order of appearance)
The Salvation Army Brownsville Corps.Steel Orchestra was founded in 2007 and is a New York city-based group of young drummers aged 10 to 26 years. The steel orchestra plays a variety of instruments, but the principal ones are steel drums. “We chose this because we wanted something unique,” said Marc Brooks, their creative director. He notes that its origins in the Caribbean were linked to the history of slavery. In the early 20th century, as slavery came to an end in places like Trinidad, people used many cultural means to celebrate their newly found freedom of expression. At first, these drums were made from castaway biscuit tins, then, oil drums. The group has played at numerous Salvation Army events in the New York and New Jersey area. All songs are spiritually inspired so that young people learn to use music as a form of worship. E-mail: marc_darius@yahoo.com.

Kinding Sindaw Melayu Heritage (www.kindingsindaw.org) is a not-for-profit cultural organization whose mission is to reclaim, preserve and re-create the legends and unwritten ancient history of the Philippines when the country was known as “Dunya Melayu Nusantara”. It was founded in 1992 by the tradition bearer and artistic director Potri Ranka Manis, Bai a Labi a Gaus of Borocot, Maging, 15th Pagawidan of Pat Pangempong Ko Ranao. Kinding Sindaw’s repertoire is based on classic and ritual dances, kulintang music, chants and silat martial arts. The group is a resident dance theater member of LaMaMa, ETC, NYC. Among its education activities are workshops and school programs for colleges, communities and public and private schools as well as lecture forums on the history and traditions of Filipino oral history. E-Mail: kindsindaw@aol.com.

JUNTOS: Artists United to End Violence Against Women is a grassroots organization begun in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico, as a vehicle for awareness through artistic expression. The founder of the project, Lena Bartula, along with members of the Mexican and expatriate community, organized a series of events called “imagina 2009”. These activities included visual arts, panel discussion, poetry readings, film series, craft fairs and community celebrations organized as part of the global 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence campaign. The cultural events covered a wide range of topics from gender equality to HIV/AIDS and human rights at local and international levels. The community of artists and galleries involved can be found at the blog site: http://imaginajuntos.blogspot.com/. E-mail: lenabartula@gmail.com

Margot Smith (www.offcentervideo.com) is a social scientist and convener of the Berkeley-East Bay Gray Panthers. To Empower Women: the Fourth U.N. World Conference was filmed in 1995 at the United Nations Fourth World Conference in Beijing, China and narrated by the late Congresswoman Bella Abzug. As an active feminist, Margot worked to educate the public on global women's issues. To this end, the film was on several PBS stations, won a trophy at Movies on a Shoestring film festival in Rochester, NY, and was shown at the Ohio Independent Film Festival, the American Public Health Association film festival, and several other festivals. Ms. Smith produces award winning independent videos on political and social justice issues and is a member of the San Francisco Film Society, California, USA. Her videos may be seen on video.google.com, (search for Margot Smith Videomaker).

The Children’s Theatre Company (http://www.childrenstheatrecompany.org) is rooted in the conviction that through the magic of theater, children and youth can be the voices of change and agents of healing. In collaboration with professional composers, writers, directors and choreographers, CTC engages four age groups in the creation and publication of musicals, plays and cast-albums. Heralded as the “crown jewel of children’s theatre in New York” by actor James Earl Jones, it serves an average of 300 to 400 children per week with a resident theatre in Greenwich Village, public schools residencies, and has eight active chapters across the United States. The Company has garnered accolades from Verizon Literacy Awards, New York Times, appeared on Sesame Street, the Today Show, Good Morning America and performed at the United Nations with Nelson Mandela. E-mail: mehrjoun@gmail.com.

Lynn Nottage (www.lynnnottage.net/) is a playwright from Brooklyn. Her plays include Intimate Apparel, Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine, Crumbs from the Table of Joy, Las Meninas, and Ruined (awarded the Pulitzer Prize for 2008-2009). These have been produced at theatres in the US and abroad including the Manhattan Theatre Club, the Goodman Theatre, the Roundabout Theatre Company, Playwrights Horizons, Center Stage, South Coast Rep., Second Stage, Freedom Theatre, Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, St. Louis Black Rep., Crossroads Theatre, Intiman, San Jose Rep., Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Steppenwolf, Yale Rep., The Vineyard Theatre, The Women’s Project, New Dramatists Playtime Lab and The Tricycle Theatre in London. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2007 MacArthur Genius Award, an OBIE Award for playwriting, NY Drama Critics Circle Award, Best play and John Gassner Outer Critics Circle awards, and American Theatre Critics/Steinberg 2004. Nottage is a graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Drama, where she is currently a visiting lecturer.