Theatre of Cultural Diplomacy
Two roles, two conversations
AlleAllen and cast 1n Nause holds separate events about his work as director & diplomat in Pakistan 
Allen and cast 2

Returning as a cultural ambassador for the United States State Department, Allen Nause, Producing Artistic Director of Artists Repertory Theatre, will speak at two different events, Tuesday, August 16 and Monday, August 22. He will discuss his role as goodwill envoy in Pakistan at the World Affairs Council event, and then hold a separate conversation about his role as a director and teacher. 

The Theatre of Cultural Diplomacy:
A Director’s Notes from Pakistan
Presented by the World Affairs Council
August 16 – Noon-1:30pm –
$5 for WAC members; $10 general admission
World Affairs Council of Oregon, 1200 SW Park Avenue, Third Floor, Portland, OR 97205

Allen Nause will talk about his recent experiences in Pakistan as a U.S. Cultural Envoy, where he directed a production of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple through the Pakistan National Council for Arts.  With a multimedia presentation, Nause will touch on the challenges of  working across cultures, why cultural diplomacy matters, and what he learned from teaching five workshops to over a hundred students and professionals in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore.  

The Theatre of Cultural Diplomacy:  A Theatre Artist in Pakistan
Presented by Artists Repertory Theatre
August 22 – 7pm-9pm – FREE
Morrison Stage at Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison, Portland, OR 97205

Allen Nause will focus this discussion on his work as a director. There is a unique set of challenges, and subsequent successes, in working with an all-local cast and crew in Pakistan as an American and on an American play, Neil Simon's The Odd Couple, in particular. Photos from his trip will aid him as he tells his story of being a cultural ambassador from a theatre artist’s perspective.

At the beginning of June, Artists Repertory Theatre’s Producing Artistic Director Allen Nause left Portland, Oregon headed for Islamabad, Pakistan on a State Department visa. Through the Pakistan National Council for Arts he was to direct a local production of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple presented by LUSH, an emerging theatre company, and the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. Nause, having served as Artistic Director of Artists Rep for the past 22 years and leading many theatre envoys to a number of countries in the Middle East, Northern Africa and Southeast Asia, thought he knew what he was getting into. What he didn’t account for was how hungry the people of Pakistan (artists and others alike) and diplomatic ambassadors were to make meaningful contact through theatre.  

“The people of Pakistan, the actors and crew I worked with, were amazing, curious and open,” said Nause. “I was treated with such authentic interest and respect at every turn that it was equally an adventure and pleasure to represent the United States and American theatre.” 

In the seven weeks Nause spent in Pakistan, he not only directed The Odd Couple but also held five theatre workshops with over 150 Pakistanis participating, including the U.S. Ambassador and his wife. Cast with local actors and designers, the play was a resounding success attracting media raves and putting Nause on the front page of international newspapers, as well as hours-long radio and television interviews. This attention led to the U.S. Embassy arranging for Nause to visit Karachi to conduct another workshop and to Lahore to conduct three more workshops. In both cities Nause attended receptions in his honor, with local artists, politicians, and cultural and diplomatic affairs emissaries. 

Click here to check out a video created by a Pakistan TV news crew for interviews and clips from the production!
Artists Repertory Theatre has made a commitment to touring that has been realized over the years with regional tours, both derived from Mainstage shows (The Laramie Project, A Midsummer Night's Dream) and original works, such as Chasing Empire's Soul, a multimedia innovative touring piece on the legacy of Lewis and Clark. Artists Rep has produced several tours of American plays under the sponsorship of the U.S. Information Agency to the Near and Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa. A 1997 tour of Pakistan included an Artists Rep production which represented the U.S. in an international play festival on human rights. In 2000, Artists Rep participated in the Vietnam America Theatre Exchange, the first ever reciprocal artistic collaboration between the United States and Vietnam. In 2004 Artists Rep was one of six companies selected by the National Endowment for the Arts to participate in Shakespeare in American Communities, a national touring project designed to bring professional theater to underserved communities. For the project, Artists Rep co-produced a bilingual production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with Vietnam's Central Dramatic Company. 

Rebecca Martinez, Artists Repertory Theatre's Director of Education and Outreach, traveled to South America in the spring of 2007 to work with youth in poverty-stricken areas from four different countries. She traveled to La Paz, Bolivia; Caracas, Venezuela; Quito, Ecuador; and Managua, Nicaragua to teach young performers and working theatre professionals with an interest in pursuing theatre as a career.  In addition to sharing valuable skills used in North American theater, she also brought skills and elements of South American theatrical styles back to Artists Rep for use in their future projects. In this exchange, she has acted both as teacher and student, attempting to transcend ethnic and linguistic barriers, and promote understanding and communication between North and South American cultures.

In each city, Martinez worked with a group of fifteen to thirty young adults, rehearsing with them for ten days - a process which culminated in an open-to-the-public presentation. The work consisted typically of two short plays, which Martinez helped the performers to prepare and memorize. The young performers brought their own performance style - very physical, with strong comedic tones, incorporation of music, and elements of clown and dance - and she supplemented it with focused text-based work, which these youth are, for the most part, unaccustomed to.

United States actors, especially in professional companies, usually make textual analysis and interpretation a foundation for their stage work, skills they pick up in a university or conservatory program. In a country like Bolivia, however, there are no theater academies. "The young performers there would get ideas from movie actors like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin," Martinez says, "and work to emulate what they are doing, and create their theater from what they saw in these movies." Other differences include their technical approach, characterized by Martinez as "super bare bones," and their approach to the student/teacher relationship, which she describes as more familial, and less formal, than our own.

Stage Two of the project brought 11 of the workshop participants for a West Coast tour of theaters in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Portland. Artists Rep acted as their home base for this tour, where the performers engaged in theater workshops, met with Artists Rep's staff and other local artists to discuss how professional theater in the U.S. works, and tour the building to see an example of how a North American theatrical facility functions. Martinez's mission operates as part of a focus on cultural outreach which Artistic Director Allen Nause brought with him when he took over the reigns of Artists Rep in 1989, and continues Artists Rep's dedication to bringing communities together through the medium of theater.