Artists Performing Truth to Power.
The 2016 election inspired a broad-based Resistance not seen in the United States in decades. People from all walks of life have been protesting, marching, mobilizing, and organizing in an effort to take back the country and create a more compassionate and just world. Artists are vital to this work. The American Repertory Theater, in collaboration with the literary magazine Pangyrus, welcomes the second season of Resistance Mic!, a series of intimate, curated evenings where a diverse collective of artists will take the stage to perform truth to power in these troubled times.
Launched on November 9, 2017—the one-year anniversary of the day after the 2016 election—Resistance Mic! is part of the A.R.T. of Human Rights series, an ongoing collaboration between the American Repertory Theater and Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. The host is Timothy Patrick McCarthy.
During 2018/19, Resistance Mic! will take place on Tuesdays (September 25, November 13, February 19 & April 16) at 8PM at OBERON, A.R.T.’s second stage theater.
Tuesday, April 16
Artists include Samantha Kate Appleton, Artress Bethany White, Youth Underground, Danielle Legros Georges, Amy Siskind, Timothy Patrick McCarthy.
Samantha Kate Appleton
Samantha Kate Appleton is a photographer and current Nieman Fellow at Harvard. Her work combines art and history to explain the complicated components of large news stories. She has covered many of the most tumultuous, man-made events of the past decade. Primary stories have included conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, social issues in Africa, and immigration issues in the US. During the first term of President Barack Obama’s administration, she was an official White House photographer. In 2007, Appleton co-founded Noor Images to promote projects in support of human rights and social justice. She has won numerous awards including Pictures of the Year, World Press Master Class, American Photography and Camera Arts. For more on Sam, see http://www.samanthaappleton.com/. (@skappleton)
Artress Bethany White
Artress Bethany White is a poet, essayist, and literary critic. She is the recipient of the 2018 Trio Award for her poetry collection, My Afmerica (Trio House Press, 2019). Her prose and poetry have appeared in such journals as Harvard Review, Tupelo Quarterly, The Hopkins Review, Pleiades, Solstice, Poet Lore, Ecotone, and The Account. Her collection of essays, Survivor’s Guilt: Essays on Race and American Identity is forthcoming from New Rivers Press/Minnesota State University in March 2020. White has received the Mary Hambidge Distinguished Fellowship from the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts for her nonfiction, The Mona Van Duyn Scholarship in Poetry from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and writing residencies at The Writer’s Hotel and the Tupelo Press/MASS MoCA studios. She is visiting professor of American cultural studies at Albright College in Pennsylvania. For more on Artress see www.artressbethanywhite.com and (@artresswhite)
Youth Underground
Youth Underground, Central Square Theater’s resident performance ensemble, creates and performs original theatre investigating social issues relevant to young people based on interviews with community members and experts, in-school residencies with area high-school students, and an in-depth workshop and development process with a professional playwright and director. This year, the ensemble decided to tackle an issue of particular importance—voting. Youth Underground’s Act Up & Vote! is a dynamic, visually engaging, accessible play that will help new voters better understand how government works and why civic engagement matters. For more on Youth Underground’s work, see https://www.centralsquaretheater.org/education/youth-underground/.
Danielle Legros Georges
Danielle Legros Georges is a poet, translator, essayist, the author of two books of poetry, Maroon and The Dear Remote Nearness of You, the chapbook Letters from Congo, and editor of City of Notions: An Anthology of Contemporary Boston Poems. As Boston’s Poet Laureate between 2015 and 2019, Legros Georges collaborated with Boston area museums, libraries, schools, artists and students; represented Boston internationally at literary festivals; presented occasional poems at official events; made commissioned work; co-founded a reading series and scholarships, created an elder poetry writing workshop; welcomed visiting poets and artists; created readings and panels; and held office hours with Boston residents interested in poetry. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at Lesley University.
Amy Siskind
Amy Siskind is a national spokesperson, writer and expert on helping women and girls advance and succeed. A former Wall Street executive, she’s President and Co-founder of The New Agenda, a national organization working on issues including economic independence and advancement, gender representation and bias, and campus sexual assault. Amy’s advocacy for equality now occurs alongside her mission as one of the most thorough and vocal observers of our failing-but-not-yet-failed democracy. When she’s not working on the lists, Amy spearheads The New Agenda’s annual events, and speaks on college campuses and to young professional women about economic empowerment and strategies for success. Amy was recognized as one of the “POLITICO 50” for The Weekly List project. On Wall Street, she was a pioneer in the distressed debt trading market. She became the first female Managing Director at Wasserstein Perella at the age of 31, and later ran trading departments at Morgan Stanley and Imperial Capital, where she was also a partner. She received her BA in Economics from Cornell University and MBA in Finance and International Business from the NYU Stern School of Business. In March 2018, the first 52 weeks of the lists were turned into a book, The List: A Week-by-Week Reckoning of Trump’s First Year (Bloomsbury). In June 2018, Siskind launched The Weekly List podcast to accompany the lists. Both the lists and podcast are being archived at the Library of Congress. Amy lives outside New York City with her children and famous dogs, Arleen and Shep. For more on Amy, see https://amysiskind.com/. (@Amy_Siskind)
Host
Timothy Patrick McCarthy (@DrTPM) is an award-winning scholar, writer, educator, and activist who has taught on the faculty at Harvard University since 2005. Twice named one of the Harvard Crimson’s “Professors of the Year,” Dr. McCarthy is also the Stanley Paterson Professor of American History in the Boston Clemente Course, a college humanities program for low-income adults in Dorchester, MA, and co-recipient of the 2015 National Humanities Medal. He is the author or editor of five books from the New Press, including Stonewall’s Children: Living Queer History in the Age of Liberation, Loss, and Love, forthcoming in Spring 2019. An A.R.T. Board Member, he is the host of Resistance Mic! and director of the A.R.T. of Human Rights series. You more, please visit https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/timothy-patrick-mccarthy.
Co-Sponsors
American Repertory Theater (@americanrep) at Harvard University is a leading force in American theater, producing groundbreaking work in Cambridge and beyond. The A.R.T. was founded in 1980 by Robert Brustein, who served as Artistic Director until 2002, when he was succeeded by Robert Woodruff. Diane Paulus began her tenure as Artistic Director in 2008. Under her leadership, the A.R.T. seeks to expand the boundaries of theater by programming events that immerse audiences in transformative theater experiences. Throughout its history, the A.R.T. has been honored with many distinguished awards, including consecutive Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Musical for Pippin and The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, as well as the Tony Award for Best Regional Theater. Under Paulus’s leadership, the A.R.T.’s club theater, OBERON, has become an incubator for local and emerging artists. Dedicated to making great theater accessible, the A.R.T. actively engages more than 5,000 community members and local students annually in project-based partnerships, workshops, conversations with artists, and other enrichment activities both at the theater and across the Greater Boston area.
Pangyrus LitMag (@Pangyrus) publishes stories, poems, essays and journalism that make artful and original connections, explore the unexpected, and break the constraints that keep people and ideas isolated. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we publish continuously online, and in print twice a year, including a special Resistance-themed issue in Fall 2018. You can find our latest publications and news at pangyrus.com.