Barnard's Elizabeth Hess Leas Workshop at Women Playwright Festival, a First-Ever in Latin America
Elizabeth Hess, a New York-based arts educator, playwright, performer, and director, and a professor at Barnard College's Theatre Department at Columbia University, visited Chile in October. Her visit included workshops at the Women Playwrights International Conference (WPI) and Universidad Católica's Theatre Department.
The WPI festival, hosted for the first time in Latin America, explored themes of territory, society, and female playwriting. Previous conferences had been held in countries such as the United States, Canada, Ireland, Greece, Australia, and South Africa. The event aimed to foster communication, exchange, and collaboration among women in theater worldwide.
At the festival, Hess conducted a workshop based on her book, ACTING & BEING: Explorations in Embodied Performance. She described the invitation as particularly meaningful due to her work’s focus on social issues centered on women’s experiences through cross-cultural and interdisciplinary collaboration. Participants from Chile, Argentina, Sweden, Canada, South Africa, and other countries engaged in explorations of poetic texts, including works by Gabriela Mistral, Chile’s Nobel Prize-winning poet. The workshop resulted in original, multilingual performances reflecting deep psychological and cultural insights.
Hess also led an Embodied Performance workshop for graduates of Universidad Católica’s acting program. Participants contributed personal images and texts in Spanish, transcending language barriers through partnered exercises. Hess praised their openness and creativity, noting that the session produced resonant and transformative outcomes.
Additionally, she joined a roundtable discussion titled “The ‘Me Too’ Movement in a Multi-Cultural World”. The panel, which included activists and academics, examined topics such as political and sexual violence, Chile’s “Disappeared,” the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality, and the role of poetic text in exploring women’s embodied experiences. Hess shared that these discussions inspired new insights for her ongoing play, SPOILED, which examines global violence against women from a male perspective but is performed by women.
Looking ahead, Hess envisions future cross-cultural collaborations between Columbia University and Universidad Católica, where students can develop theater projects that deepen their cultural understanding. She is working with UC Theatre Department Head Alexei Vergara to plan a two-week workshop for second-year acting students, culminating in an original performance addressing social urgency.
Reflecting on her visit, Hess expressed gratitude for her “remarkable academic and cultural sojourn to Chile” and looks forward to continued collaboration with CGC to expand upon the foundations laid during her trip.