About the Indigenous Performing Arts Residency
The Indigenous Performing Arts Residency (IPAR) program is a multi-year collaboration between the Department of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies and the Arts Research Center to strengthen relationships with Indigenous community partners and create ongoing support for emerging Indigenous performing artists, so that Native stories can be told on our campus now and into the future.
IPAR allows us to host emerging Indigenous performing artists, including playwrights, dancers, musicians, or performance artists, at UC Berkeley for a week, including studio time for development, a public talk or performance to share their work with the greater community, and opportunities to interact with students in class visits, studio visits, or master classes. Beginning the 2025/26 academic year, IPAR will support performing artists in dance/choreography through 2027. This builds on the prior three years success of the IPAR program supporting playwrights along with the community non-profit Alternative Theater Ensemble.
The program stems from the idea that embodied theater and performance practices are a site of historical remembering and knowledge production. The Indigenous Performing Artist Residency builds a relationship with a performance company or solo artists, to premiere Native or Indigenous creative works in their theater/performance space. ARC and TDPS collaborate to reprise those artistic works in one of our campus performance spaces. During the presentation of the performance, the artist(s) will be invited to campus to meet with our community, give talks, engage with our students in a variety of ways that best support the artistic production. It utilizes the longstanding collaborative partnership that ARC and TDPS have established with each other over many years, and utilizes both our units’ connections to theater and performing arts organizations on and off campus.
GOALS
- materially support emerging Indigenous performing artists (playwrights, dancers, musicians, performance artists)
- invite the artist to campus as a visiting Artist-in-Residence
- provide space and studio time to develop their work
- host a public performance, talk, talk back, or artist lecture to support the work and share with the greater community
- create opportunities for the artist to work with students in class visits, studio visits, master classes, etc.
PAST HISTORY
In 2023, the Arts Research Center and the Dept of Theater, Dance, & Performance Studies teamed up with Bay Area's Alternative Theater Ensemble as Berkeley’s inaugural partnership company for the 2023-2026 period. This partnership offered the opportunity to workshop or present a play by an Indigenous playwright they were working with, each spring on campus. Alternative Theater Ensemble seeks to create a more just, equitable community by supporting the creative growth of theater artists from historically underrepresented communities, and telling stories that reflect the full complexity and diversity of our community. Their work centers the spiritual and emotional well-being of Black and Indigenous people, casting roles in ways that break stereotypes rather than reinforce them and creating opportunities for both established and emerging artists to learn and support each other in their craft.
