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The Cultural Frontline: The Cultural Cost of Hurricane Harvey

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The Cultural Cost of Hurricane Harvey

09/09/2017 GMT

BBC World Service - The Cultural Frontline, The Cultural Cost of Hurricane Harvey

How important are the arts at a time of great human cost in a natural disaster?

The world seen through the eyes of artists

As residents of Texas and Louisiana begin to pick up the pieces of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Harvey, we find out the cultural cost of the storm.  We speak to Dean Gladden, the Managing Director of the AlleyTheater, one of the oldest resident theaters the US, and Adam Wagner, former actor, now an arts consultant who is co-ordinating a grassroots fundraising campaign.   

Is comedy a threat to authoritarian regimes? Bassem Youssef, a heart surgeon turned comedian who is often called the ‘Jon Stewart of Egypt’, launched a satirical TV show in Egypt after the fall of President Mubarak in 2011. It quickly became the most popular TV show in the nation’s history with nightly audiences of 30 million, but also made him a target of the authorities. Youssef’s story is the subject of a new documentary Tickling Giants. He talks about the power of comedy to hold autocrats to account, whoever they may be.  

Toilet: A Love Story is a Bollywood blockbuster with a difference, dealing with an issue never tackled before in Bollywood- India’s problem with open defecation. How much influence can such a film have in changing attitudes? 

Presenter:Tina Daheley
Producer: Shoku Amirani

Photo: Theatre district of Houston flooded. Credit: THOMAS B. SHEA, Getty Images

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