THEATRE VERSUS
OPPRESSION
REGISTERED CHARITY -
SC039092
HOME
Zimbabwe: Theory X theatre Project
David Schein’s MYethiOPIA
A solo show about how, despite the best best of intentions, the road to hell was bypassed and the Awassa AIDS Education Circus got founded. A tale of folly, a tale of wonder, of cultural ignorancee and artistic discovery.
David Schein performs MYethiOPIA as a benefit for the Awassa Children’s Project which supports the One Love HIV/AIDS Awareness Theater in Awassa Ethiopia
For booking information call 716-640-4639 or contact awassachildrensproject@hotmail.com
MYethiOPIA, a solo performance, written, directed and performed by Schein, is based on his experiences forming and directing the Awassa AIDS Education Circus with a troupe of street kids in a town in Southern Ethiopia. The show probes the cultural and economic wound dividing peoples, exposing the unavoidable colonial aspects of working in a “developing” country – where the cost of pair of Birkenstocks buys three month’s food for a family. MYethiOPia revolves around a key event: when the AIDS Education Circus is nearly trampled to death by an over eager crowd and a “condom riot” is narrowly avoided. Schein has performed MYethiOPIA in San Francisco and LA and at the Performing the World Conference in Tarrytown, NY. The performance is a benefit for the One Love AIDS/HIV Awareness Theater, which, since 2001, has performed for hundreds of thousands of people in markets and refugee camps throughout Ethiopia and at the Ethiopian National Theater in Adis Ababba.
David Schein was a founding member of Berkeley’s Blake Street Hawkeyes. “He wrote, produced and composed (with Candace Natvig) the award-winning “TOKENS: A Play on the Plague.” He was the contributing writer to “Whoopi Goldberg on Broadway,” Schein collaborated with Guillermo Gomez-Peña on NPR’s program “Border X Frontera,” was the artistic and executive director of Chicago’s Free Street Programs, and is the founding director of the Awassa Children’s Project and the One Love HIV/AIDS Awareness Theater in Ethiopia. He wrote and performed his first solo piece “Chismo” in 1973 and since then has soloed with “Life is Not A Country Western Song,” “Trucking in One Place,” “Out Comes Butch,” “My Murder and Other Local News,” and “MYethiOPIA.” He presently directs the Arts Council for Chautauqua County and the Reg Lenna Civic Center, a 1,250 seat theater in Jamestown, NY