Great disruption spurs great transformation. As we navigate our complex, interconnected world – fraught with social injustice, a mounting climate crisis and the final throes of a global pandemic – we need leaders who embody understanding, imagination and emotional intelligence. We need individuals who will move beyond the polarizing debates and tackle, with wisdom and vision, the challenges we face.
To cultivate these future leaders, industry professionals must deliver transformational experiences that help us tell our stories. For the theatre and arts community, investigating and understanding the circumstances we collectively face and the impact of these realities are key.
How can the arts help us to tell these vital stories? How can the arts help us to understand the complexity and embrace our differences; to navigate these challenges with genuine understanding and, in doing so, enrich the human experience?
Join Weyni Mengesha, ground-breaking theatre and film director, in this essential and timely conversation with John Monahan, Warden of Hart House Theatre at the University of Toronto.
Weyni is the Artistic Director of Soulpepper Theatre Company and an award-winning director, passionate about creating programming to facilitate cultural conversations. With a proclivity to take on difficult topics and make them universally accessible, Weyni wants everyone to have access to conversations that need to be told; access to peoples’ lived experiences. Importantly, she sees the theatre as a vehicle to do this. She has directed the award-winning plays da Kink in my Hair and Kim’s Convenience. Her recent work garnered a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) nomination for Best Direction. She is a five-time nominee for the Outstanding Direction Dora Award.
This special edition of Hart House Conversations Changemakers series is co-hosted by Hart House Theatre, and is being offered as part of the University of Toronto’s Alumni Reunion.