Mission Statement
for International
Theatre Cooperation Agency
In a world that is growing ever more global the necessity of
becoming a part of this growth becomes more and more apparent.
The economic success of a nation, in fact, depends on a positive
working relationship with the world market. Russia and Eastern
Europe find themselves in a peculiar situation. While the rest
of the world is advancing towards this global cooperation, they
have been forced to pause and reassess the relationship between
the state and it's people as well as between themselves and the
rest of the world. These changes, however, are only the surface
of an even deeper kind of transformation - the transformation
taking place inside of people and this is the most difficult sort
of change. If people refuse to accept changes in policy, the
chages will never succeed.
This new role for Russia and Eastern Europe is strange and
even a bit unnatural after seventy years of Russian Communism.
The Communist state has accomplished its distructive mission:
traditions are destroyed, values are abolished, national
self-consciousness (not only Russian) is absent. Now Russia
enters the world as a partner and not as an opponent; yet, they
lack the ability to operate in the structures that the rest of
the world has developed while they separated themselves from it -
they are nonconvertible. This nonconvertibility is not only one
of currency but one of mind. It prevents the needed changes in
industry, economics, agriculture, etc. form taking place.
Without true convertibility neither internal nor external changes
are possible because convertibilty is to be able to understand
one another, to live together, and to work together.
This process is most difficult because it touches every
person's psychology and dictates deep changes in their attitudes
towards each other as humans and consumers. This transformation
is possible only through a joint working process. There exists
no school that is as successful as simply working together. In
such a school for a post-communism country, the students would
simply await the revelation of some "trick" that would allow them
to be successful under these new conditions instead of changing
themselves to answer the new conditions. Some methodology or new
philosophy must be developed to help them discover the route to
success under the special conditions of their countries for
themselves. Any such technique is more akin to aristry than
business. While school should not be neglected, an accent on the
development of a new philosophy cannot be overemphasised.
The idea of this paper, that this philosophy of
convertibility is important and should be given special attention
whatever the field of interest, was born of the practical
experience of people awaiting a simple answer and instead getting
a complicated one or being given an in depth analysis of the
situation. Nobody wants to delve deeply into these problems
because to do so reveals the need for great change in their
fundamental philosophy. To change their philosophy is to change
the life that they have known, and this they are unwilling to
sacrifice. The teaching of a new philosophy, however, contains
some danger because it represents the changes to come and people
fear change. Fear is the strongest defense of the status quo.
All business activity between the West and the countries of
Eastern Europe and Russia must contain this form of training.
This nonconvertibility should also be kept in mind whan any
contracts between East and West are being established. While
such philosophical and psychological ideas are an organic part of
western business and do not exist in Russian and Eastern Europe.
Therefore, they should be appoached as a special topic when
introduced to Russians and Eastern Europeans.
The inavailability of this sort of training for businesses
and led us to begin developing an agency to provide it. The
agency, The Russian American Center and RAC Publishing House
"Connections," ready to serve you.
It does not matter what you are but who you are.
The Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold once said: "At the
sight of a chasm, some people think of abyss, others, of a
bridge". So we, the actors, theatre directors and art managers,
took this role and started Russian-American Theatre project which
has now been successfull for more than a year. We need a bridge.
So we started working.
Join us.
Liberty is always unfinished business. --anonymous
Raven Dance: Karl Kalen and Ed Ott
