Hector aristizabal biography
Home / General Biography Information / Hector aristizabal biography
In this moment when our challenges as modern people bring us closer to total annihilation, art can be a powerful antidote, it’s power and beauty moving us back towards a life-giving culture.
How or where can people see your work? He has served on the core council of the Colombia Peace Project-LA and on the boards of the Program for Torture Victims and of Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed.
Héctor was born in Medellín, Colombia, where he worked as a therapist and theater director until he was forced into exile due to persecution. How can people support your work?
Although my work with ImaginAction has taken me to more than 50 countries in the last 10 years, I still do some work with communities in Los Angeles. We then create short plays that ask questions using characters that are trying to change the conditions of their lives but can’t succeed during the play.
He currently serves as the director of Fundación Re-Conectando, which focuses on fostering reconciliation with oneself, others, and nature.
Héctor is also the co-founder of Dreaming Action, a company dedicated to guiding the evolution of organizations and communities by reconnecting people with the care of life. In 2000 I founded the non-profit organization ImaginAction Theater Inc as a way to support my work with marginalized communities in Los Angeles and other US cities.
Over the last 10 years, ImaginAction has evolved into an international organization dedicated to using theater as a laboratory to explore alternatives to conflict as well as a way to design healing rituals while working with trauma in war-torn countries.
During the last 5 years, I have been participating in the Colombian peace process by developing theater for reconciliation (TFR).
He used theater as a tool to explore alternatives to violence and as a means to design healing rituals for communities affected by war.
In 2017, inspired by the peace agreement, Héctor returned to Colombia to contribute to the reconciliation process. For the last 20 years I have created original plays with diverse communities in Los Angeles and now in many places around the world.
I have also created several theaters of witness plays with The Program for Torture Victims, telling the stories of resiliency and transformation of many of their clients. Theater of reconciliation invites communities to engage in the process of creating peace to ask the difficult question of how to reconcile an heal the many wounds that are the consequence of war.
We use theater to listen to each other stories and discover why the “other” also has a life and has the right to exist in this world.
What do you think is the biggest challenge facing artists today?
In the United States, artists have witnessed a decrease in support for our work.
He worked his way out of poverty to become a theatre artist and pioneering psychologist. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I was born in Medellin, Colombia in 1960 and was forced by the political violence to exile in the USA in 1989. Art is the modern term for ritual and ritual is the place where humanity heals.
Recently I collaborated with The Pasadena Playhouse creating two forum theater pieces with the Latino community.
In schools, the arts have almost disappeared from the curriculum, sending the message to children that beauty and their unique expression are not important.
However, our survival as a species depends on our capacity to connect to the unique gifts and talents inherent to each child born. I create spaces to conjure imagination through the power of play.
By playing together we remember who we are and re-connect with the fact that it has been through playing that we all learned to walk, to talk, to socialize.
He founded ImaginAction to help people tap the transformative power of theater in programs throughout the U.S., Latin America, Europe and around the world. He has been honored with the prestigious Otto René Castillo Award for Political Theatre and is the co-author, along with Diane Lefer, of The Blessing Next to the Wound: A Story of Art, Activism, and Transformation.
Hector Aristizabal
Medellin, Colombia
Los Angeles, California
Phone: +57 3116141309
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.imaginaction.org/
Social Media & Blogs
Blog:
Twitter:
Facebook:
LinkedIn: /hector-aristizabal-0a98ba53/
YouTube:
Other:
Bio:
Hector was born and raised in Medellín, Colombia when it was the most dangerous city in the world.
Hector has recently moved back to his native Colombia to work in the on-going peace process developing what he calls: “Theater for Reconciliation” which uses theater both as a laboratory for social exploration and as a laboratory for the creation of communal healing rituals.
Today we’d like to introduce you to Hector Aristizabal.
Every artist has a unique story.
Finally, we invite the larger community, to watch the short plays and become spect-actors by coming into the stage and improvising alternatives to the behaviors they witness in the characters.
In this way, we use theater as a human laboratory to explore alternatives to the issues confronting communities of refugees, people affected by AIDS, Alzheimer; or people fighting for their rights like LGBTQ, homeless, IDP and others.
In the United States, he continued his work as a therapist and developed original plays with various marginalized groups, including immigrants, survivors of torture, incarcerated youth, gang members, people living with AIDS/HIV, and individuals in hospice care.
In 2000, Héctor founded ImaginAction and began traveling extensively, particularly to conflict and post-conflict zones, where he trained psychosocial teams.
He is co-author of The Blessing Next to the Wound: A Story of Art, Activism, and Transformation.