Imagine That

By Deanna Zandt, AlterNet. Posted July 16, 2004.

The Republicans are coming to New York on August 29. Busloads of protesters are coming as well, joining the thousands of New Yorkers themselves planning to hit the streets. And now, a coalition of cultural institutions in New York has also planned to make their voice heard during the 2004 Republican National Convention.

The Imagine Festival was conceived over a year ago, when the Republican Party first announced it had chosen New York as the site of its 2004 convention. The organizers realized the potential to respond to issues being brought to the table through the enormous power of the New York creative community, and over the past year have assembled approximately 50 venues and over 100 events to take place across a six-day festival.

Each day of the festival corresponds to an issue/theme: Freedom, Community, Justice, Democracy, Prosperity and Future. The organizers felt the need to focus on issues, not politics, as a result of being somewhat frustrated with the existing discourse on current events and political concerns. "What the arts can do," says Chris Wangro, co-executive producer of Imagine, "is delve into the issues and decipher them, present them to the public in a way that allows them to really consider them, and to give them a way to actually think about it. We're looking to raise the bar of the discourse that currently exists."

Political theater and culture are no strangers to New York, and there will certainly be plenty during the week of the convention on the streets. What the Imagine Festival is hoping to do is provide a single, resonating voice throughout New York in the spaces not reached by the street activities; by taking advantage of the pool of creative talent that the city has to offer, and unifying that talent under an umbrella of an issue-based festival, the producers hope to cut through some of the media clutter.

The events that Imagine has planned vary wildly, as one would hope from a city that considers itself to be a cultural Mecca. Margaret Cho is kicking off her "State of Emergency World Tour" at the Apollo Theater on the opening night of the festival; Danny Simmons, co-founder of HBO's Def Poetry Jam, will present an evening of young poets from Urban Word NYC's Teen Poetry Slam Team; PS 122 will host "Patriot Acts: Patriots Gone Wild!!!" with Taylor Mac, featuring a bevy of downtown performance art stars having a patriotic, perverted tailgate party on the stage; the Bowery Poetry Club has proclaimed that it will be open 24 hours as a "safe haven from Republicans" and will host a variety of poetry, theater, live music and dance party events.

Actress Kathleen Chalfant, who will be performing the role of Clytemnestra at the staged reading of Electra at Lincoln Center during the festival, noted the duty that artists are being called to perform within the current political climate. "People say that the country is polarized and I think that if this is so only through art will we be able to break this impasse and move the country, forward, or perhaps back, to what is the best of us," she said. "The Imagine Festival calls upon the creative resources of this most American of cities, New York, during this most American of events, a political convention, to consider the questions that face us. How brave that is, how exciting."

Such a roster of diverse talent speaks to the unity and strength in which the New York arts and cultural community has decided to respond to the convention. Organizers have reported an overwhelming response and energy from the various communities, and have spent the past several months pairing up previously unlinked activist and political organizations with venues and events, building bridges between labor, social services, the activist community and the arts communities that many anticipate will outlive the conventions, and the elections themselves.

"The events of the festival aspire to educate and inform our audiences in an impassioned and unexpected way," says Wangro. "We're not looking to tell anyone what to do. This isn't just one person saying one thing. This is a major arts festival confronting issues in one big voice, taking advantage of the tremendous opportunity that the convention has presented us."

Deanna Zandt is a freelance writer, geek and the creative administrator of the Bowery Poetry Club.

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