Mr. Wilson Please

Dear Mr. Wilson:

I am currently following two Master programs: one in International Artistic Cooperation and one in Ethnoscenology. Over the last five years of Performance Arts studies and practice in Paris, I've come to the conclusion that creative spectacular practices are a privileged mean to construct a more cohesive, democratic society. You, amongst other great XXth century artists such as Arianne Mnouchkine, Eugenio Barba, Peter Brook, Tadeusz Kantor and Jerzy Grotowski, have contributed to chisel such vision.
I would be honoured to attend the 2010 Watermill Summer Program. I believe it would be a great opportunity to fuel and pursue my current International Artistic Cooperation project, aimed for 2011, which involves three three-month long performance workshops in Saint-Denis in France, Ganvié in Benin, and Salvador de Bahia in Brazil. These workshops are directed towards populations who would not normally have an access to such forms of education. Under the guidance of local practitioners and my team, the participants of the workshops will produce a spectacle based on a water-related myth, legend, or story of their choice. The whole project will be recorded and edited into a documentary format. The aim is to raise local and global awareness on the ecological, economical, and social challenges related to water.
Also, my Ethnoscenology practical master's thesis, « Le Scandale du Théâtre », focuses on a theater avant-garde guided by two directing lines: one going towards the future -new technologies, mixed media, major human mobility, cross-cultural creation- and one engraved in the past -the recovery of the secular knowledge of « how to get together »-, the communal celebration and its transcendence, as opposed to a spectacle considered only as entertainment.
I would feel privileged to attend the Watermill Summer Program, as I believe it would be a unique opportunity to put these ideas into practice and greatly help my thesis writing process and project realization. I also believe the program offered by the Watermill center is deeply in tune with my own hopes and expectations as a young theater maker: that artistic and creative collective forces transcend age, experience, social, religious and cultural differences, and as such must be encouraged and stimulated.

Sincerely,
Sofia Senna