PhD, is a Theater of the Oppressed trainer and popular educator who collaborated annually with Augusto Boal from 1990 until his death in 2009. She is a founding member of TOPLAB (1990) and the Institute of Popular Education at the Brecht Forum (1992). In addition to leading hundreds of workshops in the New York, she has facilitated sessions in numerous cities throughout the United States, as well as in Mexico City and the Mexican states of Chiapas and Tabasco, in Santa Cruz del Quiche in the Guatemalan highlands, in Guatemala City and in Cuba. An article of hers, Dramatizing Democracy: Theater of the Oppressed, appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of Fellowship. Another article, Democratic Process and Theater of the Oppressed, was published in the December 2007 issue of New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. She was Executive Director of the Brecht Forum from 1989 to 1993. She is also a tenured professor of French and Spanish, and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in Riverdale, NY.
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has been a facilitator of Theater of the Oppressed and a member of the TOPLAB since 2005. In addition to facilitating public workshops at the Brecht Forum, she has led workshops at Bard High School/Early College, New York University, and JusticeWorks Community. She has worked with organizers at Make the Road New York and Falconworks Artists Group to develop ongoing theater projects based in the lived experiences of social injustice. She has worked teaching immigrant and low income adults in New York for over ten years. Currently she coordinates the College Transition Initiative at Kingsborough Community College.
grew up in East Harlem NYC and graduated from Radcliffe College, Harvard University. She received her Master’s in Education with a specialization in Politics, Drama and Civic Engagement from Goddard College. She is a member of the facilitation collective, Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB). She has studied as a Joker of Theater of the Oppressed under the guidance of Marie-Claire Picher and Augusto Boal. Additionally, she has trained Jokers of Theater of the Oppressed nationally through the TOPLAB facilitation training program, and internationally for the Federation of Senegalese Theater of the Oppressed groups. She has facilitated workshops for hundreds of participants since beginning her training in 2006. Burton is on the faculty in the Masters of Theater Education program at Emerson College, Boston; and formerly on the Art and Humanities faculty at Roxbury Community College, Boston. She has been a member of the Medea Project Theater for Incarcerated Women in San Francisco and founder of the New Freedwoman Project in Massachusetts. She is a recipient of the Black Butterfly Leadership Award in the category of WARRIOR; as well as the Cambridge Peace Award in honor of Muses, her first play, which created positive visibility for LGBTQA communities of African descent in Massachusetts. Her work has been written about in such publications as the African American Review, ArtsMedia magazine, Proscenium magazine, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Boston Phoenix, Bay Windows, and Bay State Banner and has been interviewed for the Commonwealth Journal on WMBR. Currently, Burton served on the steering committee of the Boston Busing Desegregation Project, which engages community educators from the metro-Boston area in using storytelling, narrative and applied theater methodologies to re-vision quality education for all.
Ed.D. Columbia University, peace educator, writer, artist, activist. Facilitator, Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (1997-present). Education Director, International Institute on Peace Education (IIPE) (2001-present). Co-Director, Peace Education Center, Teachers College, Columbia University (2001- 2010). Wrote Public Deliberation on Global Justice: The World Tribunal on Iraq, which received a Peace and Justice Studies Association Dissertation Award. Research: contentious politics, social movements, democratizing justice, public deliberation, conflict processes, peace pedagogy. Member, Editorial Board In Factis Pax. Painter, former choreographer and dancer who used the arts for community building primarily in the immigrant community of Washington Heights/Inwood, New York City.
is an Emmy-award winning writer, a producer, and a Theater of the Oppressed trainer. She works with NGOs, government agencies, and community organizations in using in story-based strategies for mobilization, engagement, and education
In 2010 Kayhan won a New York Emmy award for best writing for We Are New York, a 9-episode broadcast TV drama used as an English language and civic engagement tool for immigrant New Yorkers. She created a linked, community-based conversation initiative that brought thousands of immigrants, throughout the five boroughs, together to practice English in volunteer-led conversation groups. She also created comic books based on the series which were translated into five languages and distributed in NYC public hospitals, courts, CBOs and local meeting places. In 2012-2013 Kayhan was a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Researcher in India working on her new play, Tree of Seeds. Her one-woman show, We've Come Undone toured nationally and internationally, telling stories of Arab, South Asian and Muslim-American women in the wake of 9/11. She has trained hundreds of groups in Theater of the Oppressed and participatory storytelling tools over the years, both nationally and overseas, in Afghanistan, India, and Iraq. Her published work includes Telling Stories to Change the World: Global Voices on the Power of Narrative to Build Community and Make Social Justice Claims (Routledge, 2008), and Culturally Relevant Arts Education for Social Justice: A Way Out of No Way. (Routledge, 2015). Kayhan was one of ten artists named as a White House Champion of Change for her art and storytelling work in 2016 by the Obama administration. Her website is www.artivista.org and her email is kayhan@artivista.org.
Photo: Jasmine Rashid