With an uncensored and humorous voice, Judyie Al-Bilali, theatre director and Fulbright Scholar, shares her years as a visiting artist in post apartheid South Africa. In the midst of a divorce, Al-Bilali's world is disintegrating as the whole world is reeling from 9/11. In her travels she not only develops a passion for the newly democratic South Africa, she engages in a tumultuous love affair with a younger man, a Congolese refugee who becomes her emotional anchor in a foreign land. Comparable to the phenomenally successful 'Eat, Pray, Love' by Elizabeth Gilbert, Al-Bilali writes with startling candor, poetry and political insight from the unique perspective of an African American woman at the crossroads of mid-life. South Africa is in a self-described state of 'Transformation' and offers the ideal atmosphere for an educational project devoted to social change. Al-Bilali's theatre company, Brown Paper Studio, "connects people first to themselves and then to each other". It grows into a way of life for the young people who participate and who ultimately form a creative community that continues to thrive to this day. At the heart of the story is her unlikely relationship with a partner many years younger; a person displaced by war "existing in the margins on the outskirts of the edge." Along the way she shares aspects of her history prior to living in Africa: the basics of her training in theatre, the contradictions of living in the multiple worlds of class and race in America and her ultimate battle, facing one's mortality in a prolonged bout with cancer. Al-Bilali's frank, vulnerable and compelling memoir reveals how she must balance the needs of her family in the States with a passion to realize Brown Paper Studio and the desire to maintain a challenging romance. Provocative and unpredictable, 'For the Feeling' is a book for anyone willing to embrace an unexpected direction in their life. Her sojourn will inspire you, challenge you and ultimately remind you that the changes we want to see in the world really do begin with ourselves.
About the Author: For over thirty years Judyie Al-Bilali has been an innovator in performing arts and arts education. She worked in off-Broadway, regional, community and educational venues and has collaborated with some of the most gifted theatre artists of her time along with members of the new, upcoming generation of talent. Having taught at universities and colleges in the US she is now faculty in Educational Theatre at NYU. She was a Fulbright Scholar in South Africa where she established and directed Brown Paper Studio, an Applied Theatre company and is currently a Fulbright Senior Specialist. Al-Bilali received her BA in African American Performing Arts and her MFA in Theatre from the University of Massachusetts. She is the recipient of a Jacob Javits Fellowship in Arts and Humanities, along with grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York Foundation on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. As an arts administrator she has worked at Crossroads Theatre Company, New York State Council on the Arts, Actors Theatre of Louisville and the Kentucky Arts Council. She published a book of haiku poetry, 'Halcyon Days' and lives in New York City with her daughter Lillian Hanan and their cats, Buster Rhymes and Coco Chanel.