Kindling Conversations is Celebration Barn’s new online series of interviews and idea-sharing to spark creation and performance. On Thursday, January 21, Amanda Huotari will talk with Norma Bowles, artistic director of LA’s Fringe Benefits theatre company, and Rene Johnson of Portland’s Embodied Equity Consulting, about how they each create performances and events to facilitate community dialogue around issues of social justice. 

Kindling Conversations are free to attend with pre-registration required. We welcome questions from participating viewers!

About the Guests:

Norma Bowles is the founding artistic director of the award-winning Fringe Benefits social justice theatre company (www.cootieshots.org). She is also the first recipient of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s award for Leadership in Community-Based Arts and Civic Engagement. Fringe Benefits collaborates with schools and communities to create theatre that promotes constructive dialogue about diversity and discrimination issues. Sir Ian McKellen narrates Surviving Friendly Fire, the award-winning documentary film about their work with LGBTQ+ street youth. Bowles edited both of Fringe Benefits’ play anthologies, Friendly Fire and Cootie Shots, and co-edited Staging Social Justice: Collaborating to Create Activist Theatre, an anthology of essays about Fringe Benefits’ collaborative devising process. Bowles has conducted residencies in Theatre for Social Justice, acting, commedia dell’arte and new play development with community organizations, universities, and theatres throughout the United States, as well as in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Spain and the United Kingdom. Bowles has enjoyed teaching Acting, Theatre and Social Change, Comedy and Social Change, Children’s Theatre, and Voices of Justice at Loyola Marymount University since 2012.

René Goddess Johnson is an award-winning arts & community organizer, choreographer, coordinator of multicultural affairs, education and events, designer, director, non-profit founder, performance artist, and producer. As an Embodied Equity Consultant, she works closely with the public, with artists of many genres, with minority communities, youth, and nonprofit organizations throughout the state of Maine, to develop creative opportunities focused on inter-organizational collaboration using the arts. 

She was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and then raised in the suburbs of Portland, Maine starting at age 6. From 2014 - 2019 her work with the Theater Ensemble of Color team, TEoC (TEE-oC), created a strong unconventional institution committed to social justice and racial equity as well as historical education. The dedicated, talented and committed work of TEoC’s team is recognized throughout New England for it’s outstanding original productions (Best Theater Company, Ensemble, 2018 in Portland Maine) and exceptional educational outreach programs and workshops. 

Since 2013, she has performed and toured her own one-woman, devised and interactive show, g e e l. The action unfolds through thoughtful storytelling as her "tribe," the audience, experiences a new kind of theater that includes powerful dance and song in multiple languages, including English and Afrikaans. To learn more, visit www.embodiedequityconsulting.com.