SPRING 2006 progams
DOcumentary
theatre series
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SPRING 2006 progams DOcumentary |
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Curated by Carol Martin, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University This series of evenings features leading artists working in the form best known in the US as documentary theatre. Currently, there is worldwide participation in this form of theatre, a participation that has begun to etch a global consciousness about social justice, political and personal history, the moral authority of legal truth, and the relationship of the real to the represented. Documentary theatre represents a struggle to shape and remember the most transitory history and the complex ways in which men and women think about the events that shape the political landscapes of their lives. This struggle over the future of the past etches the urgency of the genre. Documentary theatre is the result of acts of assemblage. History is reconstructed from the shards of the past, even the past of yesterday. Interviews, documents, print, video, simulation of specific personages, and virtual media are manipulated to form events into stories told with various types of theatrical reason. As reconstructions, documentary theatre contains enough bits and pieces of information to create accounts of what happened. Collectively, the work of global documentary theatre practitioners proposes that theatre is able to influence public consciousness about our present in order to consciously create our future. Dr. Carol Martin is an associate professor of drama at Tisch School of the Arts,
New York University who writes on contemporary American and Japanese
performance, and globalization. Her guest edited issue of TDR will appear in the summer of 2006. |
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An Evening with Igal Ezraty, Israel Igal Ezraty is one of the founders of the Arab-Hebrew Theatre in Jaffa, Israel. He has mostly directed plays about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with Hebrew-speaking members of the theatre. The El Serayah Theatre Company runs the Arab part of the theatre. Together they share a theatre in two languages with each group collaborating on running the theatre while keeping their own autonomy and artistic freedom. In 2000 Ezraty staged a Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank modeled on the hearings in South Africa. More recently, Ezraty staged The Refusniks compiled from the court proceedings of the young Israeli men whose refusel to serve in the military was a nonviolent form of resistance to serving in the occupied territories. Igal Ezraty teaches acting and directing at Tel Aviv University and Hakibutzim Acting Studio. Ezraty’s dramaturgical and directorial work includes Back to the Tempest, The Refusniks’ Trial, and an adaptation of Peer Gynt, and Let’s Dance: Jaffa 1919-91. Ezraty has received several awards, including The Tel Aviv Rozenblum Prize for Artistic Activity, the Margalit Prize, the 2002 Best Play of the Fringe Festival for the play Longing, an Honorable Mention (Shterenfeld Prize) for directing Mister V, and a First Prize (Acre Festival) for The Lane of White Chairs. The excerpt reading of The Refusniks’ Trial will be directed by Chris Mirto, N.Y. 6:30 p.m., Monday, May 1, 2006, Martin E. Segal Theatre Res. Code 6785. Free |
An Evening with Marc Wolf, USA Marc Wolf is the award-winning author and performer of Another American: Asking and Telling, a documentary play about gays and the military. Wolf's most recent documentary work is The Road Home: Re-Membering America, the story of his long drive across the country immediately after September 11 and the people he interviewed along the way. In this work, Wolf insightfully portrays the fears and hopes of 20 different characters during one of the greatest crises in American history, documenting a critical moment of changing American social and political consciousness. Patriotism, foreigners, New York City, the government, as well as the characters themselves, become his subjects. With these stories, Wolf weaves the many threads that delicately held our nation together during this fragile time. Marc Wolf recently performed the world-premiere of The Road Home: Re- Membering America at Geva Theatre and Huntington Theatre, directed by David Schweizer. He received an OBIE and was nominated for the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for his Off-Broadway performance of Another American: Asking and Telling at The New Group, directed by Joe Mantello. He also performed Another American at Mark Taper Forum (Garland Award), Seattle Repertory Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Trinity Repertory Theatre, The Studio Theatre Washington D.C. (Helen Hayes Award, GLAAD Award), Baltimore Center Stage, About Face Theatre (Jeff Nomination), New Conservatory Theatre (Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award), Boston Theatre Works, New York Stage & Film, Provincetown Repertory Theatre, Dixon Place, Mabou Mines, and at various colleges and high schools. Mr. Wolf recently played the role of Daniel Rivnine in the East-coast premiere of Itamar Moses's Outrage at the Wilma Theatre. The Road Home: Re-Membering America was commissioned by McCarter Theatre and developed with an NEA/TCG grant. Another American: Asking and Telling is published in Political Stages: Plays that Shaped a Century (Applause Books.) Mr. Wolf is a graduate of Williams College. 6:30 p.m., Thursday, May 11, 2006, Martin E. Segal Theatre Res. Code 6786. Free |
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An Evening with Emily Mann, USA Emily Mann is a preeminent American documentary playwright. Her documentary plays are created from extensive interviews, documents, and newspaper accounts. Among these plays are Still Life, about the Viet Nam War's impact on domestic lives in the United States; Execution of Justice, which reexamines the 1978 murder of Harvey Milk, the first openly San Francisco gay council member; and Greensboro: A Requiem, a reinvestigation of the 1979 murder of anti-Ku Klux Klan demonstrators in North Carolina. A theme common to all Mann's plays is the way in which communities have their own unwritten system of ethics by which they live. All of her documentary plays have been devoted to the cause of social justice. The Holocaust, violence, racism, and homophobia have all been her subjects. Emily Mann, Artistic Director of McCarter Theatre, wrote and directed Having
Our Say (adapted from the book by Sarah L. Delany and A. Elizabeth Delany
with Amy Hill Hearth), which played on Broadway and was nominated for three
Tony Awards, an Outer Critics, and a Drama Desk award. Ms Mann’s teleplay
for Having Our Say aired on CBS and received a Peabody Award, a Christopher
Award, and a nomination for outstanding achievement in television and radio
by the Writers Guild of America. Ms Mann’s Meshugah, adapted from the
story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, was produced off-Broadway. Her play, Greensboro (A Requiem), premiered at McCarter in 1997. Other McCarter directing
credits include: Miss Witherspoon, The Bells, Last of the Boys, Getting Home,
Anna in The Tropics, Uncle Vanya (adaptation), The Tempest, All Over (Obie
Award), Romeo and Juliet, BecauseHeCan, The Cherry Orchard (adaptation),
Fool For Love, Safe as Houses, The House of Bernarda Alba (adaptation),
Betrayal, The Mai, A Doll House, The Perfectionist, Miss Julie ( adaptation), Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof, Three Sisters, Betsey Brown (co-author), The Glass Menagerie, The Matchmaker, and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. Her first play,
Annulla, An Autobiography, premiered at The Guthrie Theater and was produced
at The New Theatre of Brooklyn. She directed her play, Still Life, Off-Broadway in 1981 and won six OBIE Awards. Ms Mann’s awards include the 6:30 p.m., Monday, May 15, 2005, Martin E. Segal Theatre Res.Code. 6787. Free |
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