Devika Ranjan

• Class of 2017

• Roots of GU experience: The Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics, Mask & Bauble
• What Davis Center experience was most transformative? Working with the Lab for Global Performance & Politics to create I Pledge Allegiance and bring it to Segovia for the International Theater Institute and its tour of the West Coast was life-changing. So many others!
• What’s the Davis Center’s lasting impact on your current values and work? In terms of values and work, the Davis Center made me consider how performance interacts with social justice in all of its forms. As the Resident Director of a youth immigrant theater company, I work with families that immigrated to the United States, and I am constantly thinking about how to bring values of collaboration, empathy, and ethically amplifying the stories of their community.
• What are some professional highlights?

1. Creating theater with refugees and immigrants in London — workshops for newly arrived asylum-seekers and immersive theater that centered stories of West African internal displacement
2. My research and advocacy for asylum-seekers who were electronically tagged and surveilled in the UK was adopted by Amnesty UK as one of their resolutions.
3. Conducting theater workshops internationally in Colombia, Nepal, India, UK (with the support of the Lab!) focused on decolonized storytelling of the everyday.
4. In the spring of 2021, I created a new pandemic-safe theatrical experience, Yours Truly, that took place entirely through letters. The audience entered into a fictional pen-palship with a Filipina teenager in Chicago, learned about her life during the pandemic, and helped her as she discovered a family secret. We are releasing a non-interactive version in 2022.

What will the future hold for the Davis Center? “MORE of what we do best! There will always be true connection with students, encouraging socially-driven performance, and leading with a critical lens.”

Devika Ranjan