Closing keynote speech: Professor Ananda Breed, University of Lincoln in conversation with Frederique Lecomte & Hope Azeda

Professor Ananda Breed, University of Lincoln, interviews Frederique Lecomte, member of the Ariadne network and founder of Théâtre & Réconciliation, & Hope Azeda, member of the Ariadne network, director of the Ubumuntu Festival and founder of Mashirika Performing Arts. Here Ananda, Professor of Theatre, in the School of Fine and Performing Arts at the University of Lincoln, details her own research in performance and theatre in post-conflict zones, and areas of fragile peace, drawing on her previous fieldwork, meeting and interviewing both Frederique and Hope in-country about their practice. Ananda talks us through her research on maternal environments, of safe spaces, of empathy, and where all of that intersects with gender, taking a global purview of women working in the arts and creative industries. The conversation between Ananda, Frederique and Hope is a rare opportunity to hear these three prestigious theatre-makers talking about their own conception of their creative and social ‘mission’, the ‘boundaries of practice’ and what might be their next iteration of making.

Professor Ananda Breed is author of Performing the Nation: Genocide, Justice, Reconciliation (Seagull Books, 2014) and co-editor of Performance and Civic Engagement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) in addition to several publications that address transitional systems of governance and the arts. She has worked as a consultant for IREX and UNICEF in Kyrgyzstan on issues concerning conflict prevention and conducted applied arts workshops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Indonesia, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Palestine, Rwanda and Turkey. Breed was founder of the Centre for Performing Arts Development (CPAD) at the University of East London and former research fellow at the International Research Centre Interweaving Performance Cultures at Freie University 2013-2014).