Pan-African Film and Arts Festival
For this festival, I moderated a conversation and preview of the trailer and behind the scenes documentary of the film adaptation “Black Terror,” written by Richard Wesley and directed Richard Lawson.
[ Instagram link ]
[ Festival website ]
The Odyssey Project
I was an invited instructor of martial arts for the Odyssey Project™, a collaborative theater process between youth from a juvenile detention facility in Santa Barbara county and undergraduate students from the University of California Santa Barbara. Using the template of Homer’s Odyssey, the participants gather on the university campus to explore the mythic elements in their lives in order to reconstruct the epic poem in their own voices. The project leads to a public performance at a local theater. Everyone on this creative journey is a hero or heroine. The project is designed to honor youth in identifying their heroic life mission and map a course of action. It employs theater arts as a strategy for inspiring life affirming choices.