Los Angeles Hope Festival: 3 Days of Hope and Optimism
The Los Angeles Hope Festival is a three-day capstone event of the the Hope and Optimism initiative, a $5 million, four-year grant at Notre Dame, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania. The project explores the theoretical, empirical, and practical dimensions of hope, optimism, and related states.
All daytime sessions are free but seats are limited, click on the session time below to RSVP. All events are at the Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles, 2220 Beverly Blvd.
FRIDAY, MAY 19th
3 – 4:30 | PANEL – THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HOPE: Michael Scheier, Eshkol Rafaeli, Lori Markson (Moderator: Samuel Newlands)
4:45 – 6:15 | KEYNOTE – Tali Sharot: “The Science of Optimism”
6:30 | Box office and bar area open
7 – 9 | PERFORMANCE – “I Carry Your Heart” by Georgette Kelly
9:30 | LIVE MUSIC BY THE BAR with Matthew Logan Vasquez of Delta Spirit
SATURDAY, MAY 20TH
11 – 12:15 | TALK – Yiyun Li: “The Small Why and the Big Why: Under the Supervision of Memory”
12:15 – 1:45 | LUNCH – Food Trucks
1:45 – 3:15 | PANEL – THE PHILOSOPHY OF HOPE: Luc Bovens, Nicole Hassoun, Andre Willis (Moderator: Andrew Chignell)
3:30 – 4:45 | TALK – Sabra Williams: “Hope In Darkness – The Actors’ Gang Prison Project”
5 – 6:15 | KEYNOTE – Dr. Cornel West: “Justice Matters – What Love Looks Like in Public”
6:30 | Box office and bar area open
7 – 9 | PERFORMANCE – “I Carry Your Heart” followed by talkback with playwright, director, actors
8:30 | LIVE MUSIC BY THE BAR – Tyler Cole & Willow
SUNDAY, MAY 21ST
10 – 12:00 | READING – “How To Conquer The World: A Brief History Of Yogurt,” followed by talkback with playwright David Myers
12:30 – 1:30 | LUNCH – Food Trucks
1:30 – 3 | READING – “The Body,” followed by talkback with playwright Steve Moulds
3 – 3:30 | SCREENING – Winning shorts from Hope on Screen video competition, conversation with grand prize winner Keaton Davis
3:45 – 5 | TALK – David Eagleman, neuroscientist and host of The Brain on PBS
5:15 – 6:30 | READING – “Are We Not Men?” by T.C. Boyle followed by Q&A with the author
6:30 | Box office and bar area open
7 – 9 | PERFORMANCE – “I Carry Your Heart” by Georgette Kelly
9:15 | LIVE MUSIC BY THE BAR with Orkestar Meze and Daniel Rotem
— For a more detailed explanation of each event by theme, and complete show calendar for the mainstage play, please scroll down. —
FRIDAY AT L.A. HOPE FESTIVAL
Friday, May 19 at 3:00PM – PANEL – THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HOPE
Optimism and Pessimism: Implications for happiness, coping, and health – Michael F. Scheier is Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). His research falls at the intersection of personality, social, and health psychology.
Becoming parents: A study of dyadic, dynamic, and malleable hope – Eshkol Rafaeli is a clinical psychologist and an Associate Professor in the Psychology Department and Neuroscience Center at Bar-Ilan University, where he directs the Affect and Relationships Lab. He and his students seek to advance the understanding of two key components of daily life – our affect (that is, our moods and emotions) and our relationships (and particularly the intimate bonds connecting committed couples).
Children’s positive outlook on self and society – Lori Markson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Washington University in St Louis. She directs the Cognition & Development Lab where she and her students investigate social cognitive and conceptual development in early childhood.
The Science of Optimism
Have humans evolved to be optimistic? How is optimism generated? How is it maintained in the face of reality? What is the optimism bias and is it good or bad? Who is most likely to be optimistic? And can we use the bias to our advantage? In this talk Cognitive neuroscientists Tali Sharot will answer those questions and more.
Speaker: Tali Sharot (Author of The Optimism Bias, Associate Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and founder/director of the Affective Brain Lab at University College London. Her papers on decision making, emotion, and influence have been published in Nature, Science, Nature Neuroscience, Psychological Science, and many others. She has been featured in numerous outlets and written for The New York Times, Time Magazine, Washington Post, CNN, BBC, and more.)
Friday, May 19 at 7:00AM (Opening)
“I Carry Your Heart” by Georgette Kelly
Phoebe is a young poet, forever living in the shadow of her estranged mother’s literary acclaim. When her mother unexpectedly dies Phoebe is left with two complicated legacies: donating her mother’s organs and reading her mother’s unpublished confessional journal. Meanwhile, Tess and her partner Lydia receive an early morning phone call, informing them that a donor heart is available for Tess. As these two families form an unlikely connection, they struggle to understand the politics and poetics of organ donation—and they dare to hope that pieces of us can live on after great tragedy.
SATURDAY AT L.A. HOPE FESTIVAL
“The Small Why and the Big Why: Under the Supervision of Memory”
There are big whys and small whys. The big whys are not always answerable. The small ones are often neglected, replaced by other small whys. But what is disregarded does not disappear. The small whys come back, part of something bigger by then. In this talk, Yiyun Li will look at literature and her own life and explore how, under the supervision of memory, the big whys and small whys intertwine with hope and despair, optimism and pessimism, to make up the true disposition of life.
(Yiyun Li, MacArthur Foundation)
Speaker: Yiyun Li (As an author, she has received numerous awards, including Whiting Award, Lannan Foundation Residency fellow, 2010 MacArthur Foundation fellow, 2014 Benjamin H. Danks Award from American Academy of Arts and Letters, among others. She is a contributing editor to the Brooklyn-based literary magazine, A Public Space.)
*LUNCH AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE AT THE FOOD TRUCK 12:30-1:30PM*
Saturday, May 20, 2017 at 1:45PM – PANEL – THE PHILOSOPHY OF HOPE
Hope: In Pictures and Poetry – Luc Bovens is currently a Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method in the London School of Economics. He is currently working on a book entitled Coping: a Philosophical Guide in which he explores topics in moral psychology such as hope, regret, gratitude, self-deception, love, and death.
Human Rights, Hope and the Virtue of Creative Resolve – Nicole Hassoun is a residential fellow with the Hope & Optimism Project at Cornell University and an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Binghamton University. Professor Hassoun heads the Global Health Impact project intended to extend access to medicines to the global poor. It assists policymakers in setting targets for and evaluating efforts to increase access to essential medicines.
Perfidious Hope – Andre C. Willis is the Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University. He is a philosopher of religion whose work focuses on Enlightenment reflections on religion, African American religious thought, critical theory, and democratic citizenship as it relates to hope, recognition, and belonging.
Saturday, May 20, 2017 at 3:30PM
“Hope in Darkness: The Actors’ Gang Prison Project”
(Students participating in a program with The Prison Project, photo by Peter Mert)
Speaker: Sabra Williams & Prison Project (Williams is an actor and activist who oversees The Actors’ Gang Prison Project, which conducts weekly and seven-day intensive programs inside the California prison system, a weekly re-entry program in the community, as well as program in juvenile facilities, and soon a program designed for correctional officers.)
Saturday, May 20, 2017 at 5:00PM
“Justice Matters: What Love Looks Like in Public”
(Dr. Cornel West, Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Speaker: Dr. Cornel West (Dr. West, Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University, will impart a message of love, hope, equality, and justice with a focus on American democracy but with reference to a broader global humanitarian context. Topics will range from the current political climate, Socratic self-examination, social activism, the African American Freedom Fighting tradition, and more.)
“I Carry Your Heart” by Georgette Kelly
Phoebe is a young poet, forever living in the shadow of her estranged mother’s literary acclaim. When her mother unexpectedly dies Phoebe is left with two complicated legacies: donating her mother’s organs and reading her mother’s unpublished confessional journal. Meanwhile, Tess and her partner Lydia receive an early morning phone call, informing them that a donor heart is available for Tess. As these two families form an unlikely connection, they struggle to understand the politics and poetics of organ donation—and they dare to hope that pieces of us can live on after great tragedy.
SUNDAY AT L.A. HOPE FESTIVAL
Sunday, May 21 at 10:00AM (Reading)
“How to Conquer the World: A Brief History of Yogurt” by David Myers
In 1975, un-proven research assistant Arlene Hoffman created the ad campaign that transformed a queer fermented milk product into the 9 billion dollar a year phenomena it is today. Now, with the ghost of her dead immigrant father, Arlene will tell us how she did it. A story of culture, appropriation, family and the American Dream.
Sunday, May 21 at 1:30PM (Reading)
“The Body” by Steve Moulds
While mom is away, Abby and her stepdad Joe spend what promises to be a frustrating week together. Then an unusual crate appears on their doorstep, and they work to unravel the meaning of its contents—a life-sized doll with no face, and an instruction manual with no words. Was this doll sent here to repair their relationship? Or is it a harbinger of a more disturbing truth for Joe?
Hope on Screen: Short Video Winners
How We Navigate Ourselves into Our Possible Futures: Lessons from Neuroscience
In this talk, David Eagleman will present a framework of the brain as a team of rivals, with different networks driving different behaviors. He’ll discuss how a major job of intelligent brains is simulation of the future, and he’ll leverage lessons from neuroscience about how we can best steer ourselves into the future—keeping our behavior consistent with a long-term notion of the self.
(David Eagleman, photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for New York Times)
Speaker: David Eagleman (New York Times bestselling author, he heads the Center for Science and Law, a national non-profit institute, and serves as an adjunct professor at Stanford University. He is the writer and presenter of the international PBS series, The Brain with David Eagleman; a TED speaker; a Guggenheim Fellow; and winner of the McGovern Award for Excellence in Biomedical Communication.)
Sunday, May 21, 2017 at 5:15PM (Reading followed by Q&A)
“Are We Not Men?” by T.C. Boyle
(American author T.C. Boyle, Photo by Brill/ullstein bild via Getty Images)
Speaker: T.C. Boyle is winner of the PEN/Faulkner Prize (World’s End), the PEN/Malamud Prize (T.C. Boyle Stories), and the Prix Medicis Etranger for the best foreign novel in France (The Tortilla Prize). He is the author of twenty-six books of fiction including The Terranauts (2016), The Harder They Come (2015), The Inner Circle (2004), Drop City (2003), and After the Plague (2001).
“I Carry Your Heart” by Georgette Kelly
Phoebe is a young poet, forever living in the shadow of her estranged mother’s literary acclaim. When her mother unexpectedly dies Phoebe is left with two complicated legacies: donating her mother’s organs and reading her mother’s unpublished confessional journal. Meanwhile, Tess and her partner Lydia receive an early morning phone call, informing them that a donor heart is available for Tess. As these two families form an unlikely connection, they struggle to understand the politics and poetics of organ donation—and they dare to hope that pieces of us can live on after great tragedy.
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Full showtimes for “I Carry Your Heart” by Georgette Kelly
Evening showings at 7:00PM
Thursday, May 18 (Preview) | Friday, May 19 (Opening) | Saturday, May 20 | Sunday, May 21 | Thursday, May 25 | Friday, May 26 | Saturday, May 27 | Thursday, June 1 | Friday, June 2 | Saturday, June 2 | Thursday, June 8 | Friday, June 9 | Saturday, June 10
Matinee showing on Sunday, May 28, 2017 at 2:00PM
Phoebe is a young poet, forever living in the shadow of her estranged mother’s literary acclaim. When her mother unexpectedly dies Phoebe is left with two complicated legacies: donating her mother’s organs and reading her mother’s unpublished confessional journal. Meanwhile, Tess and her partner Lydia receive an early morning phone call, informing them that a donor heart is available for Tess. As these two families form an unlikely connection, they struggle to understand the politics and poetics of organ donation—and they dare to hope that pieces of us can live on after great tragedy.
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