Casting The Vote: An ‘American’ Dinner
The dinner table is where everything happens: friends meet families, communities see themselves for the first time, relationships take shape, solidarity is discovered and affirmed, and of course, hunger is satisfied. Passing the salt, refilling the water glass, and offering a second helping – there, laid bare, is the subtle integrity of human beings being together. Our American stories, our mythologies, and our activism are written at the table between courses – but lately, we seem to be eating alone.
You’re invited to a very special dinner party – back to the table, the drawing board, and the stage, back to eye contact. We have something to talk about, something as American as family dinner: the right to vote.
Created by
Director Charlotte Brathwaite
In collaboration with
Journalist and filmmaker June Cross
Dramaturg Sunder Ganglani
Writer Janani Balasubramanian
Performed by students/staff at MIT
CASTING THE VOTE is a participatory, community dinner based on recent scholarship and activism around voter suppression in The United States. It’s a performance, a family style meal, and an attempt to ask and answer the most difficult questions of our time – together. Come with open hearts, empty stomachs, and as much good faith as you can offer. Suppress neither your appetite nor voice.
CASTING THE VOTE : An American Dinner Party is in part supported by MIT Music and Theater Arts, The Brown Institute for Media Innovation’s “Magic Grants,” a collaboration between Columbia University’s Journalism School and Stanford University’s School of Engineering; as well as MIT’s Open Doc Lab.