Laboratory For Global Performance & Politics

Performing Community

The Lab humanizes global politics through performance. We cultivate a distinctive global community of collaborators that includes students, emerging and established artists, educators, policy leaders, and activists. Our work harnesses narrative, memory, and acts of witnessing with the aim of sparking transformation and change.

CLARK YOUNG
Co-Author

NEW YORK: Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski (as My Report to the World) at the Museum of Jewish Heritage | INTERNATIONAL: Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski at Queen Mary University, London; with Teatr IMKA in Warsaw, Poland | STC: The Taming of the Shrew (free-for-all), The Servant of Two Masters | REGIONAL: Ford’s Theatre: Fly, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee; Woolly Mammoth: Full Circle; Studio Theatre: Astro Boy and the God of Comics, Songs of the Dragon Flying to Heaven; Company One: Astro Boy and the God of Comics; Synetic Theater: Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Lysistrata; National Symphony Orchestra: georgeWASHINGTON | FILM: Remember This | TEACHING: Georgetown University (Acting, Directing), Bronx Lighthouse College Prep Academy. EDUCATION: Georgetown University: BA in English, Theater and Performance Studies, NYU Tisch: MA in Performance Studies | PUBLICATIONS: Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski: GU Press, 2021 | PERSONAL: he/him/his | UPCOMING: .406 Below, a new play about Ted Williams and the quest for immortality.

DEREK GOLDMAN

Director, Co-Author

Derek Goldman is the Chair of Georgetown University’s Department of Performing Arts and Director of the Theater & Performance Studies Program, as well as Co-Founding Director of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, with the mission to harness the power of performance to humanize global politics. He is an award-winning stage director, playwright/ adapter, scholar, producer, and developer of new work, whose work has been seen around the country, off-Broadway, and internationally. His work has been seen at theaters such as Steppenwolf, Lincoln Center, Arena Stage, Baltimore Center Stage, Folger, Round House, Everyman, Mosaic, Theater J, Synetic, the Kennedy Center, Ford’s Theater, McCarter, Segal Center (Montreal), Olney Theater (where he is an Artistic Associate), and others. He is the author of more than 30 professionally produced plays and adaptations, including work published by Samuel French, and he has directed over 100 productions. His engagement with global performance in recent years has taken his work to Sudan, Cambodia, Bangladesh, China, Poland, South Africa, Australia, Peru, Bulgaria, Armenia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, France, and throughout the UK, among other places. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Theatre Communications Group (TCG); Vice-President of UNESCO’s International Theatre Institute, and Founding Director of the global Network of Higher Education in the Performing Arts. He holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University and he recently received the President’s Award for Distinguished Scholar-Teachers at Georgetown.

DAVID STRATHAIRN

On April 24, 2014, in collaboration with Derek Goldman and Clark Young, Strathairn joined with The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics in Georgetown to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Jan Karski’s birth. Earlier versions of this piece were invited to Warsaw in October of that year and performed at Teatr Imka as part of the celebration of the opening of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish jews, in NYC at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and in Boston at Georgetown University’s John Carroll weekend. Other projects of which Strathairn is most proud of being a part of include: The THEATRE OF WAR Productions, community-specific theatre-based projects that address vital public health and social issues; George Clooney’s film Good Night and Good Luck about Edward R. Murrow’s confrontation, and ultimate victory against Senator Joseph McCarthy; Spielberg’s Lincoln starring Daniel day Lewis; John Sayle’s films Matewan, Eight Men Out, and City of Hope; Doug Magee’s Beyond the Call, about the tragic consequences of PTSD; and the plays Scorched by Wajdi Mouawad and Underneath the Lintel by Glenn Berger at ACT in San Francisco. Most recently: Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley, and Nomadland, a film written and directed by Chloe Zhao and featuring Strathairn, won the top prize, the Golden Lion, at the Venice Film Festival.

Lighting Designer: Zach Blane
Associate Sound Designer: Delaney Bray
Movement: Emma Jaster
Scenic Designer: Misha Kachman
Associate Lighting Designer: Minjoo Kim
Original Music and Sound Design: Roc Lee
Costume Designer: Ivania Stack
Production Stage Manage: Laura Smith