SPRING 2008 progams

Swedish Provocateur: An Evening with Lars NorEn

Join us for a rare public dialogue with Swedish theatre artist Lars Norén, one of Europe’s most important contemporary playwrights. Excerpts from three Norén plays will be followed by an intimate conversation with Norén, moderated by Randy Gener, senior editor of American Theatre magazine.
 
This evening aims to complement Rattlestick’s New York production by presenting excerpts from the new translations of Marita Lindholm Gochman. Cosmin Chivu, founder of InterArt Theatre Group, directs a reading from Norén’s 1997 play Romanians. Excerpts from his 1991 And Give Us the Shadows, a love-hate drama between Eugene O’Neill and his last wife Carlotta, will be read by actors Stephen Nisbet and Ching Valdes-Aran. Riksteatern’s production of Norén’s 2003 play Kyla, a frightening portrait of youth violence, will be shown on video.

Lars Norén was born in Stockholm in 1944. His plays include Night, Mother of the Day, 1982; Demons, 1984; Autumn and Winter, 1989; And Give Us The Shadows, 1991; A Kind of Hades, 1997; Romanians, 1997; Shadowboys 1999; and On November 20, 2001; In Memory of Anna Politovskaya; 2007. From 1999 to 2007, he was the artistic director of RiksDrama, the drama division of Sweden’s national touring theatre company Riksteatern. Norén’s new play War will have its U.S. debut at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, starting January 31.

Randy Gener is a New York city-based writer, critic and playwright. He is the senior editor of American Theatre, a monthly magazine published by Theatre Communications Group (TCG). He has lectured widely on arts and culture in the U.S. and in Europe.

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is a multi-award-winning nonprofit organization and recipient of the 2007 Ross Wetzsteon Memorial Obie Award, which recognized the company for its work and mission: developing and producing innovative new plays. Rattlestick provides a positive, nurturing experience for new and emerging playwrights and present diverse and challenging plays, including those important works that might not otherwise be seen by a New York audience. Now in its 13th season, Rattlestick has produced more than 38 world premieres in the past 12 years. www.rattlestick.org

6:30 p.m., Monday, January 28, 2008, Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!

Romeo Castellucci / Societas Raffaello Sanzio (Italy)

Join us for an evening with Italian director Romeo Castellucci, one of the superstars of contemporary European visual theatre. The idea for this new play, Hey Girl!, came to him while stopped at an intersection, where he saw a group of girls waiting for their buses. In this piece Castellucci examines through a language of gesture the inner workings of the mind of a teenage girl. In Castellucci's masterful hands, nuance is everything: a nod, a finger pointed, a raised eyebrow, or a moment of recognition. What is her destiny? Who summons her to appear? Hey girl! performs Feb. 7-10, 2008 at the Kasser Theater, Peak Performances @Montclair State University.

Societas Raffaello Sanzio: Romeo Castellucci along with Chiara Guidi and Claudia Castellucci make up the artistic core of Societas Raffaello Sanzio, the theatre company they founded in 1981. The name they assigned to the company partly reflects their artistic education.

Romeo Castellucci (b.1960) has obtained diplomas in Painting and Scenography at the Academy of Fine Arts; Claudia Castellucci obtained the diploma in Painting and Chiara Guidi is graduated in Arts, with specialization in Art History. Raffaello is the Renaissance painter (Raphael) who combines the perfection of the shape with the inquietude of a world which is quickly losing its reference points; therefore he is the witness to a dramatic tension and a dynamics of technique that are trends always present in the company's works.

6:30 p.m., Wednesday February 6, 2008, Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!

henry ong / sweet karma-Haing S. Ngor Foundation / ITP (cambodia, USA)

Join us for a reading of Sweet Karma by Henry Ong, directed by Marcy Arlin, an “InterPLAY of Art and Biography.” Followed by a discussion with the playwright and Jack Ong, Executive Director of the Los Angeles based Dr. Haing S. Ngor Foundation, on questions of the relationship between biography, art and theatre; survivor guilt and genocide; spirituality and the Cambodian tragedy as exemplified in the life of Dr. Ngor. In collaboration with Immigrants' Theatre Project, supported by the The Dr. Haing S. Ngor Foundation and the DCA.

Sweet Karma is based on the life of Dr. Haing S. Ngor, a survivor of the Cambodian holocaust and the celebrated Oscar-winning actor of The Killing Fields, who was fatally shot in the streets of Los Angeles. In the play, set in the afterlife, Haing encounters a mysterious Woman who insists on helping him review his life. Is this cosmic retribution or sweet karma?

Marcy Arlin is a New York-based director and the founder, in 1988, of the Immigrants' Theatre Project. Immigrants' Theatre Project was created to present professional theatre about the American and international immigrant experience and received the 2003 OBIE for innovative theatre. Using traditional and experimental theatre forms, ITP has premiered over 400 plays and worked with theatre artists from over 90 nations/ethnicities.

Henry Ong is the author of Madame Mao’s Memories, a play which has been produced internationally and nationally, including the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego and TheatreWorks in Singapore. Fabric, Ong’s docudrama about the Thai garment workers slavery case, was produced by Singapore Repertory Theatre in Singapore and Nomad Theatre in Surrey, England. A ten-time recipient of the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department grants, Ong is a member of the Dramatist Guild, the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights, Playwrights Ink, and an Artistic Associate of Playwrights’ Arena.

The Dr. Haing S. Ngor Foundation has the primary mission to develop programs fostering diversity and multicultural understanding through education, activism and the arts. The Foundation is also committed to preserving the legacy of Dr. Haing S. Ngor and his human rights work in Cambodia and America, as well as the history of those who survived the genocidal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979). (www.haingngorfoundation.org)

The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs provided additional funding.

6:30 p.m., Monday, Feb. 25, 2008 Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!

The Lost Apple Plays – Cuban "Pedro Pan" Exodus

Join us for an evening of scenes from plays followed by a discussion about Operation Pedro Pan, the 1960-62 exodus of more than 14,000 unaccompanied minors from Cuba to the US. The displaced children and their lost country are often characterized by a Latin American nursery rhyme "La Manzana Perdida." Playwrights Eduardo Machado, Melinda López, Mario Ernesto Sánchez, and Nilo Cruz compose a Cuba that can be neither lost nor recovered for Pedro Pans. Part of NYC’s Immigrant Heritage Week 2008. In collaboration with Dos Alas Theatre, Jason Ramírez and Kimberly del Busto, artistic directors.

Excerpts from the following plays will be performed as concert readings:
Kissing Fidel by Eduardo Machado
Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams by Nilo Cruz
Sonia Flew by Melinda López
Matecumbe: el vuelo de Pedro Pan by Mario Ernesto Sánchez

Eduardo Machado is the author of over forty plays including The Cook, Kissing Fidel, Havana is Waiting, and the tetralogy The Floating Island Plays. He serves as the artistic director of INTAR Theatre and currently teaches playwriting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Nilo Cruz's plays include Anna in the Tropics, Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams, A Park in Our House, Two Sisters and a Piano, and Lorca in a Green Dress. He is the winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Cruz is also part of the new experimental theatre company maderamen (www.maderamen.org).

Melinda Lopez was the first recipient of the Kennedy Center's Charlotte Woolard Award, and has been a resident playwright at the Huntington Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, and the Lark Theatre. Her award-winning plays include God Smells Like a Roast Pig, Sonia Flew, and Midnight Sandwich/Medianoche.

Mario Ernesto Sánchez is a playwright, actor, director, and producer. He is Founder and Artistic Director of Teatro Avante, established in 1979 in Miami, Florida, as well as producer of the widely acclaimed International Hispanic Theatre Festival.

Dos Alas Theatre is a new company dedicated to producing and researching both Cuban and Puerto Rican Theatre in the United States. Dos Alas has performed and shared research at festivals in New York, Miami, Minneapolis, and Roanoke. (www.dosalas.org).

6:30 p.m. Monday, April 14, 2008, Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!