Ithaca College

Kathleen Mulligan, Associate Professor in Theatre Arts, has been awarded a $327,000 grant from the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan to create a new play about the effects of violence on public spaces. The project will involve nine months of development with Theatre Wallay in Islamabad, and will culminate in performances at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, Artists Repertory in Portland, Oregon and here on the Ithaca College campus in Fall 2017.

Associate Professor Kathleen Mulligan (Theatre Arts), along with local collaborators Linda Alper (actor and playwright), David Studwell (director and actor), and Theatre Wallay in Islamabad, Pakistan, has been awarded a $327,000 grant from the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan to create a new play called On Common Ground (working title) about the effects of violence on public spaces. The U.S. creative team will travel to Pakistan over the next nine months to work with the Theatre Wallay company on play development. The Pakistani artists will then tour to the U.S. and perform at The Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Artists' Repertory Theatre in Portland, Oregon. Two Pakistani actors will be in residence at Ithaca College in fall 2017, working with theatre arts students on additional material for the piece. Theatre Wallay will then tour On Common Ground in Pakistan and offer educational outreach to promote tolerance.

This is Professor Mulligan's second project funded by the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan. The first, Dagh Dagh Ujala (This Stained Dawn), which focused on the partition of 1947 and toured to Ithaca College in the fall of 2015.