THE SQUARE
THE SQUARE
The Square is a theatre collective based in New York City. The name “The Square” comes from a traditional Chinese philosophical concept: The sky is round; the ground is square. It is a metaphor for how nature and society work. The square is where people gather together to share opinions, ideas, and stories, which is exactly how we see theatre. Theatre is a public space for human beings to connect with each other and make meanings collectively. The Square is founded by two artists Jing Dong and Jiawen Hu. They collaborate on making non-traditional interdisciplinary theatre performances that explore social and political issues. They work with and for underrepresented groups on projects that aim to empower community members, celebrate their identities, and build a stronger sense of community. They generate performances through arts-based research, devising, ethnodrama, and community collaboration.
Jing is a theatre maker originally from China. She has been devising original theatre pieces that explore current issues and focus on how oppressed people navigate contemporary societies. Her works were performed in low-income neighborhoods, immigrant workers’ communities, art districts, and traditional theatre spaces in China. As she continues her theatre journey in New York, she connects with immigrant communities, LGBTQ community, and female community to explore possibilities to make change through theatre.
Jiawen Hu is a theater maker and teaching artist originally from Hangzhou, China. Jiawen has been working on the interview-based theatre projects with underrepresented groups including Chinese females, undocumented immigrants, HIV positive people, and LGBTQ communities. Her work as a performer, director, and stage manager has brought her to Judson Memorial Church, The Civilians, National Queer theater, and Theaterlab. She has also served as a teaching artist with immigrant youth and multilingual learners in New York City and major cities in China.
“The Square is grateful for the AIR opportunity at University Settlement. We are honored to work with the settlement house community. We look forward to creating a space for community members to gather together, share stories and ideas, and reflect on both personal and communal experiences. Seeing others and ourselves, celebrating cultures and identities, and building a stronger community, are what theatre is about.”
PERFORMANCE PROJECT: “We all have things that we had to leave behind when we moved from one place to another. Only after these things had disappeared from our life did we realize the absence of them. Often in our hearts rises the sorrow of not having had a proper farewell” (The Square). The theatre project The Art of Losing explores the common human experience of losing from the perspective of immigrants. In this project, The Square wants to reactivate the sleeping memories and encourage participants to empower themselves through a meditation on the past. Through research, open workshops, ensemble building, interviews, and devising, this project provides time and space for participants to connect personal memories to a broader scope of human experiences, find echoes in other people, feel supported by fellow participants, and be inspired to step forward into the future. An interdisciplinary theatre performance consisting of words, physical movements, performance art elements, real stories, and interaction with the audience will emerge from the process of collective exploration and reflect this journey.
COMMUNITY CONNECTION: During the process, The Square provides as many opportunities as possible for community members to participate. Everyone is welcome in the settlement house community to participate in the open workshops. These workshops will center on the experiences and creativity of participants. They encourage people with no theatre experience to join because it is not professional training, but real communication that makes theatre valuable. In a later phase, they will move on to build an ensemble with participants who want to be a part of the final performance. People with immigrant experience, as well as people who are interested in the theme of losing and immigration will make up the ensemble. In this ensemble, collective inquiry and devising workshops will be conducted, so that the ensemble members gain ownership of the project and become more comfortable and capable of sharing life experiences with each other, as well as future audiences, in theatrical forms. Meanwhile, they will also conduct interviews to engage people who are willing to share outside the performance space. These interviews will be integrated into the performance. With all these ways of engaging community members, they hope the final performance will reflect the stories, thoughts, experiences, and ideas of the settlement house community.