Campus will be buzzing with culture, as Cultural Conversations, a festival celebrating diversity in the arts, kicks off tomorrow.

The festival includes plays, dance performances and art exhibits with an emphasis on exploring and celebrating various cultures.

All of the events this weekend are free of charge.

The idea for the event came from the School of Theatre's Diversity Committee, Elisha Clark, a Penn State assistant professor of dance and committee member, said.

This will mark the first time that the festival is being held, and the Diversity Committee plans to continue festival annually.

"We're trying to give students an opportunity in their growth and training," Clark said.

"We feel like the School of Theatre does a good job every year of presenting a wide variety of racially- and culturally-diverse plays, but because they have to be fully produced, a lot of smaller, more experimental works aren't always on the agenda to be produced."

The event will also feature original works by student playwrights throughout the week of the Cultural Conversations festival.

The plays will be read rather instead of being fully staged, Susan Russell, a Penn State University theatre instructor and committee member, said.

Some of Russell's works have been produced in New York, and her play, Severe Clear, will be read on Sunday afternoon at the Pavilion Theatre.

Another play by Ross Harris (junior-theatre) will also be read for the first time Tuesday at the Pavilion Theatre.

"This is my first full-length play that will be performed in front of an audience," Harris said.

"It really discusses religious diversity in a way that I think is extremely unique because it shows how people would react to a miracle in modern-day times."

Some well-known artists will be in attendance as well, such as Heather Raffo, who will perform her renowned one-woman show, 9 Parts of Desire, in which she takes on the roles of nine different Iraqi women in the same performance.

"This play is actually changing the world as we speak," Russell said.

According to Raffo's Web site, www.heatherraffo.com, the play "9 Parts of Desire is also about the need for feminine strength as a necessary part of any culture's endurance."

Being aware of other cultures is an important facet of social life, not just at Penn State, but everywhere around the world, she said.

"Cultural diversity is something that everyone needs to work on. The more you bring culturally diverse art into a community, the more people will talk about diverse cultures. It's a self-perpetuating cycle, [with] everyone talking in a global framework instead of just talking in a local framework," she said.

Clark said there will be a closing discussion next Thursday, which will address the cultural diversity topic.

"We really want it to be a place of people just being able to come together and talk about diversity [and] whether people feel like they are represented in the art that they're seeing. [It will be] a safe place to bring concerns or ideas," Clark said.