Europa Newswire's Open Salon Blog

Exploring Cross-Cultural Dialogue through Theater – Photos

Sat, 19 May 2012 01:05:25 -0400

Europa Newswire

Photos by Luiz Rampelotto

Foreign Press Center – New York – May 17 2012

MR. HWANG: “Oh, I think everybody is really concerned about trying to attract younger audiences. I mean, part of the problem with Broadway and younger audiences is just the cost of tickets. If you have to spend $200 to go to the theater, it’s unlikely that people who are in their 20s are going to be able to afford that. Now there are a lot of ways to get cheaper tickets. It’s kind of like airline tickets. You can always find a cheaper way to get a ticket. But you have to sort of already be going to Broadway and be savvy enough to be able to know those things”.

“So I think it’s hard, and that’s one of the things that I think Broadway has been very successful at over the past 20 years is attracting families. So there’s a big emphasis on family shows, and certainly Lion King is the best example of a show that has been huge for families – but that’s parents taking their kids, which hopefully translates into those kids getting older and then wanting to go on their own. But – yeah, and I think that the – it’s why – I mean, a show like American Idiot; American Idiot is not a baby boomer show. American Idiot – what, the album came out in ninety – what, ‘96 or something? So it’s kind of a Gen-X show, and it did pretty well”.

“So there’s attempts – if you look at the range of a Broadway season, there are always shows that are attempting to bring in new audiences. So this – just now, it closed, but there was the basketball show, Magic/Bird, which is – because the thing that they always say is that the audiences that you can’t get in, that won’t buy tickets, are kind of basically straight men. Straight men don’t want to go to the theater. So you do a basketball show, or you do or Book of Mormon has been good and appealing to straight guys. And so everybody’s – so there are all these different groups that you’re trying to appeal to, and I think Chinglish we did a better job of appealing to. We had certainly a larger percentage of Asians and Asian Americans in our audience in those Broadway shows”.

“And if you went to see a show like Stick Fly, which was the Lydia Diamond play about an African American family – it was on Broadway earlier that season – those audiences, I think, were about 60 percent African American. So there’s attempts to try to broaden the pool. How successful they are is another question”.

Source: Foreign Press Center – New York

Indigenous Peoples and Food Sovereignty – Photos

Wed, 9 May 2012 21:05:45 -0400

Europa Newswire

Photos by Luiz Rampelotto

United Nations May 08 2012

Activists for indigenous rights today said that five years after the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted, a great deal remains to be done to realize the objectives contained in that landmark document.

Tonya Gonnella Frichner, native American activist and lawyer:
“We are recommending that the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues conduct an international study on this doctrine and look at the effects that the Doctrine of Domination has had on our health, our physical, psychological and social wellbeing as well as our human and collective rights.”

Grand Chief Edward John, Chairperson of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues:
“Those schools were premised on this idea that indigenous peoples were inferior to the general population, their cultures and civilisations were inferior, their languages were not to be spoken, children had to be taken from their families and communities and placed in these institutions to begin the gradual civilisation and Christianisation of our peoples. As if our history and our cultures and our languages were not important.”

On 17 May, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will convene a high-level event to mark the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration, reflect on good practices and assess the document’s role in fulfilling the rights of the world’s indigenous peoples.

Adopted by the General Assembly in September 2007 after more than two decades of debate, the Declaration is a non-binding text that sets out the individual and collective rights of indigenous peoples, as well as their rights to culture, identity, language, employment, health, education and other issues.

Source: UNTV

Born Too Soon

Wed, 2 May 2012 22:05:00 -0400

Europa Newswire

Photos By Luiz Rampelotto

United Nation, May 02 2012

Being born too soon can mean agony for life, and that’s for those lucky enough to survive. A new UN-backed report says that 15 million babies – more than one in ten – are born prematurely each year, meaning they are delivered before 39 weeks of gestation.
Many of those babies suffer some type of lifelong physical, neurological, or educational disability, often at great cost to families and society. And each year, over one million preterm babies die shortly after birth.

Dr. Carole Presern, Director of the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health:
“Prematurity is the number one cause of newborn death and the number two cause of death among all children under the age of five, and I want to pause on that because this is completely new and groundbreaking.”

Most of the countries with preterm rates above 15 percent are in Africa – but the problem is not confined to low-income countries.

Adam Pallone, USA parent of preterm baby:
“Her brain injuries made it difficult for her to eat, and she currently has to receive her food through a tube that’s implanted into her stomach. She’s been diagnosed with cerebral palsy, her days are filled with physical therapy and doctor’s visits. She’ll be turning two in almost a week, and she’s still unable to crawl or sit without assistance. Since her birth, her medical bills have totalled over 1.2 million dollars. Her condition, resulting from her prematurity, will likely require lifelong care, and many more treatments, many more bills.”

In poor countries, preterm babies rarely make it that far. More than 90 percent die within the first few days of life.

According to the report, inexpensive treatments could save at least three quarters of preterm babies in the developing world.

The authors estimate that “kangaroo care” alone, where the infant is held skin-to-skin on the mother’s chest to keep warm, could save almost half a million lives a year.

And one big key to reducing preterm deaths, they say, is to help all pregnancies go to full term, because “a healthy baby is worth the wait”.

Source: UNTV

United Nations First International Jazz Day – Exclusive Photos

Tue, 1 May 2012 09:05:24 -0400

Europa Newswire

Photos by Luiz Rampelotto

United Nations, April 30 2012

Dozens of jazz greats from around the globe are expected at UN headquarters tonight for a star-studded concert in celebration of the first annual International Jazz Day, which seeks to spotlight the historic influence of jazz in connecting people and igniting social change.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), along with the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, is hosting the concert which feature an all-star cast of performers, among them Herbie Hancock, Tony Bennett, Chaka Khan, Angélique Kidjo and Romero Lubambo. Co-hosts include actors Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas and Quincy Jones.

Lionel Loueke, Beninois guitarist:
“As a jazz musician, what you do is you improvise, and I think this goes for jazz as well as for life in general, you need to be able to express yourself freely. In all the countries of the world where you have freedom of expression, you generally have more peace. So you see, they go together.”

Kidjo, who serves as a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), pointed out that jazz had its roots in slavery, and urged people to confront slavery’s modern forms.

Angelique Kidjo, Beninoise singer/songwriter and activist:
“Slavery is not an event in human history that we could be proud of. And out of this horrible event emerged something that is fantastic, which is music that has allowed people who were being reduced to animals, to preserve their human dignity.”

Source: UNFeed

NYC First Green Festival – Photos

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:04:18 -0400

Europa Newswire

Jacob Javits Center – New York – April 21 2012 – United Nations promoting Rio+20 at the First NYC Green Festival at Jacob K. Javits Convention Center downtown Manhattan

Credit: Luiz Rampelotto/Europa Newswire