PEN World Voices Festival: The New York Festival of International Literature
April 27th- May 3rd, 2009
Join us for three days of the PEN World Voices Playwrights Festival at the Segal Center. As New York’s first international writers’ festival, PEN World Vocies is an answer to American cultural insularity, and an attempt to enrich and sustain a global dialogue. Each spring the Festival brings writers from all over the world to New York City to introduce American audiences to the finest international literature.
Caro Llewellyn, Director, World Voices Festival/ Public Programs.
Elizabeth Weinstein, Manager, World Voices Festival/ Public Programs
Revolution/Evolution
In this year of particularly apt anniversaries—Galileo’s telescope (1609), Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), the Cuban Revolution (1959), the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe (1989), Tiananmen Square Massacre (1989)—PEN World Voices Festival will bring together an inspiring array of literary figures from across the globe to explore an age-old question: how does the world change, how do we change?
PEN American Center is the largest branch of the world’s oldest international human rights and literary organization. International PEN was founded in 1921 as an association of writers working to advance literature, defend free expression, and foster international literary fellowship, and the 141 PEN centers in 99 countries that together compose the International PEN continue that mission today. Michael Roberts, Executive Director. www.pen.org
Language in New Forms – The Work of Andrei Platonov
Participants: T.J. Clark, Wendy Lesser, Michael Ondaatje, and Francine Prose.
One of the masters of 20th century Russian literature, Andrei Platonov is a writer of haunting purity and startling originality. A supporter of the Revolution, Platonov responded both to its utopian promise and to the terror it unleashed in fiction of extraordinary stylistic radicalism—stories, novels and plays in which, under the shock of the modern, language itself takes on previously unimagined forms, while also resonating with an apocalyptic tenderness. Contemporary writers will read from Platonov’s work, celebrating a solitary genius who, like Kafka or Malevich, tested and transformed the limits of art.
Co-sponsored by the New York Review of Books and PEN World Voices Festival
6:00 p.m., Thursday, April 30th, 2009
Elebash Recital Hall. Free!
Standing Before History: Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa
Moderated by Okey Ndibe.
On November 10, 1995, Nigeria’s military dictatorship hanged Ken Saro-Wiwa, one of the country’s most acclaimed and popular writers and the leader of a grassroots environmental movement in the oil-rich but impoverished Niger Delta. Many of the issues Saro-Wiwa gave his life to raise will be the subject of a New York trial in a lawsuit brought by Saro-Wiwa’s family against oil interests for complicity in his murder. Join Ken Wiwa and Richard North Patterson for a discussion of his legacy, with readings from Saro-Wiwa’s work by Steve Connell and Sekou. Co-sponsored by Guernica Magazine.
4:00 p.m., Friday, May 1st, 2009
Elebash Recital Hall. Free!
The Language of Fear: A PEN America Event
Participants: Guillermo Fadanelli, Wayne Koestenbaum, Colum McCann,
Kathrin Röggla, and Anya Ulinich. Moderated by Jeffrey Lependorf.
Franklin Roosevelt’s famous declaration about “fear itself” is being quoted more than ever. So how does a climate of fear affect the lives of writers—and the life of
literature? The new issue of PEN’s award-winning journal, PEN America, examines these questions and many others. Several of the journal’s recent contributors reflect on the life of writing and the language of fear at moments of change and uncertainty.
8:00 p.m., Friday, May 1st, 2009
Elebash Recital Hall. Free!
Péter Nádas in Conversation with Daniel Mendelsohn
Introduced by Kira Brunner Don
When the Hungarian censors finally consented to the publication of Peter Nádas’ A Book of Memories, it was compared to the work of Marcel Proust and Thomas
Mann. Susan Sontag called it “the greatest novel written in our time, and one of the great books of the century.” Péter Nádas joins us to talk about the huge scope of his work, nationalism, memory, personal responsibility and history with award-winning author of Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, Daniel Mendelsohn. Co-sponsored by the Hungarian Cultural Center.
3:00 p.m., Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
Elebash Recital Hall. Free!
German Theatre director Armin Petras + Fritz Kater’s We Are Camera
Maxim Gorki Theatre Berlin
Photo courtesy of the Gorki Theatre
Fritz Kater is the play-writing alter ego of a renowned German director. Born in Bad Kleinen in 1966, he relocated to East Berlin, where he was involved in independent theatrical ensembles in a religious environment. In 1987 he emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany. In addition to his day job, he has written theatre plays since his return to Berlin in 1990 and is married with three children. (Despite the large similarity, Kater is not to be mistaken for Armin Petras, born 1964 in Meschede, who relocated to the GDR with his parents in 1969, who studied directing in East-Berlin, who has since then been busy as an adaptor of film and literature, as well as a stage and artistic director, and since 2006 the head of of the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin.) In collaboration with Antje Oegel International, Raphael Martin (Dramaturg/Associate Producer) / henschel Schauspiel/Berlin.
Heaven
Photo courtesy of the Artists
We Are Camera is the third play in Fritz Kater’s Homeland trilogy and the story is at once personal and political. The play concerns itself not only with a family in crisis, but with German history from the Second World War to 1989. The work is set on December 31, 1969 in a hotel in Finland, which serves as a staging post for a family who is fleeing from West Germany to East. Ernst, the father, is a GDR spy in the Federal Republic. He plans to take his family—wife Paula and their two children Mirco and Sonja—to safety in the GDR. But Paula is unfaithful to Ernst with one of the hotel’s staff... We Are Camera tells the story of that fateful night and the aftermath of the family’s terrible history.
8:00 p.m., Friday, May 1st, 2009
Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!
Translation supported by The Goethe-Institut, New York.
The Goethe-Institut Digital Library of Theatre offers an innovative new way to access to translations of contemporary German plays.
Visit the website www.goethe.de/theaterbibliothek.
Harold Pinter Memorial Celebration
Saturday,
May 2nd, 2009
Harold Pinter and Harry Burton
Photo courtesy Harry Burton
UPDATED SCHEDULE!
Join us for a day-long tribute to Harold Pinter on May 2 at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The event will celebrate the life and achievements of the Nobel Prize-winning dramatist, screenwriter, political activist, and actor. The tribute, presented by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center as part of the PEN World Voices Festival, has been curated by British actor-director Harry Burton, a close friend and longtime collaborator of Pinter’s.
The celebration will feature live performances, including a rehearsed play reading; film screenings; poetry and prose; panel discussions; rare audio and video recordings of Pinter in his own plays; the U.S. premiere of Burton’s documentary portrait Working with Pinter; and a screening of Pinter’s Nobel acceptance speech, “Art, Truth and Politics.”
Henry Woolf, a lifelong friend of Pinter’s who is featured in the documentary, is participating in the celebration, along with Burton. Other participants include PEN president Salman Rushdie; movie directors Paul Schrader and Patricia Rozema, who have worked with Pinter; playwrights John Guare and Emily Mann; Tony Award-winning actor Brian O’Byrne; Todd Haimes, artistic director of the Roundabout Theatre; actor Jason Isaacs; Charles Grimes, author of Harold Pinter’s Politics; Susan Hollis Merritt, author of Pinter in Play and the Bibliographical Editor of The Pinter Review; and Alistair Macaulay, dance critic of The New York Times and former theater critic of The Financial Times.
Four sessions will take place in Proshansky Auditorium, beginning at 11 a.m. with “The Early Days,” followed by “Man of the Theatre,” “Pinter at the Movies,” and “Pinter and Politics.” Performances in the evening, beginning at 7 p.m., will include a staged reading of The Dumb Waiter and Woolf performing Monologue. Films will run consecutively throughout the day in the Segal Theatre Center screening room, beginning at 11 a.m. with The Birthday Party, and continuing with The Comfort of Strangers, Krapp’s Last Tape,”One for the Road, Voices, and Party Time.
Harold Pinter
Photo courtesy Harry Burton
Harold Pinter (b. London, 1930) plays include The Room (1957), The Birthday Party (1958), The Dumb Waiter (1959), The Caretaker (1960), The Lover (1962), The Homecoming (1965), No Man’s Land (1975), Mountain Language (1988), Moonlight (1993), and Celebration (2000). He adapted many of his stage plays for radio and television and he wrote the screenplays to a number of films including The Servant (1963), The Last Tycoon (1974) and The Comfort of Strangers (1989), adapted from Ian McEwan’s novel. Pinter directed his own plays as well as those by other writers, including James Joyce, Noel Coward, Tennessee Williams, David Mamet and Simon Gray, and acted on stage, film, television and radio. In 2001 he was awarded the S.T. Dupont Golden PEN Award by the English Centre of International PEN. In 2005, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Harold Pinter was married to the writer Lady Antonia Fraser and lived in London. He passed away December 24, 2008.
SEGAL THEATRE - Pinter Screenings all day (see below)
PROSHANSKY AUDITORIUM
Documentary screening, discussions and live performances
Greetings…………………………………FRANK HENTSCHKER
Introduction…………………………….HARRY BURTON
11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
The Early Days
A look at the early influences and experiences which shaped Harold Pinter’s career. This event features the U.S. premiere of the essential documentary, Working with Pinter, introduced by its director, and curator of today’s program, HARRY BURTON.
HENRY WOOLF, actor, director, and long term friend of Pinter, joins the discussion to share his unique perspective.
1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Man of the Theatre
JOHN GUARE (Playwright), TODD HAIMES (Artistic Director of the Roundabout Theatre), ALASTAIR MACAULAY (dance critic of the New York Times and former theater critic of the Financial Times), EMILY MANN (Playwright), SUSAN HOLLIS MERRITT (author of Pinter in Play and the Bibliographical Editor of The Pinter Review), and NEIL PEPE (Artistic Director of Atlantic Theatre), discuss Pinter’s relationship with the stage, as playwright and as actor.
2:45 p.m. – 3:45 p.m.
Pinter at the Movies
PAUL SCHRADER, who adapted Pinter’s work for the screen, and PATRICIA ROZEMA, who directed him in his starring role in Mansfield Park, share their unique perspectives on working closely with Harold Pinter, and place his achievements in the context of the cinema of the twentieth century.
4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Pinter and Politics
Harold Pinter’s Nobel Prize Acceptance speech, “Art, Truth and Politics,” receives its first-ever U.S. public screening, with an introduction by SALMAN RUSHDIE. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion on Pinter’s life as an activist, and his influence on other artists and dramatists. CHARLES GRIMES (author of Harold Pinter's Politics), EMILY MANN, ALASTAIR MACAULAY, and SUSAN HOLLIS MERRITT, weigh in to discuss Pinter’s lasting impact on the essential relationships between art, truth, and politics.
7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Live performances
7:00 p.m. Monologue
Performed by HENRY WOOLF
7:30 p.m. Poetry and Prose (excerpt)
Performed by EVE BEST, HARRY BURTON, and HENRY WOOLF
8:10 p.m. The Dumb Waiter
Read by JASON ISAACS and BRIAN F. O’BYRNE
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE
Screenings and audio recordings
11:00 p.m. – 12:45 p.m.
The Birthday Party
Directed by Kenneth Ives. Pinter stars in this 1984 BBC version of his 1957 play.
With Joan Plowright, Kenneth Cranham, Colin Blakeley and Julie Walters.
Pinter said in 1988: "Between you and me, the play showed how the bastards...how religious forces ruin our lives. But who's going to say that in the play? That would be impossible. Petey says: 'Stan, don't let them tell you what to do.' I've lived that line all my damn life. Never more than now."
1:00 p.m. – 3:10 p.m.
The Comfort of Strangers
Directed by Paul Schrader. Starring Natasha Richardson, Christopher Walken, Rupert Everett, and Helen Mirren. Adapted from Ian McEwan's 1981 novel.
Paul Schrader said of the novel's sexual politics, "No amount of civilization can overcome the fundamental hostility between men and women." Pinter's biographer Michael Billington comments, "It is not only one of Pinter's best films; it is also one of his most acutely political."
3:10 p.m. – 4:10 p.m.
Krapp's Last Tape
By Samuel Beckett. Directed by Ian Rickson.
Pinter's dozen or so performances of Beckett's masterpiece at the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs in October 2006 were so oversubscribed that tickets went for hundreds of pounds on eBay. The performance was recorded for BBC TV.
4:15 p.m. – 4:45 p.m.
One for the Road
The 2001 Dublin production from The Gate Theatre. Directed by Robin Lefevre (Arena BBC TV). It stars the author. Pinter wrote this play after meeting some Turkish women at an Embassy reception in London. Appalled by their indifference to the suffering of illegally detained, brutally tortured communist prisoners, Pinter later remarked: "I was so angry that instead of giving them a bloody nose, I went home and immediately started to write One for the Road."
5:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Pinter reading extracts from 4 of his plays (audio)
Betrayal
Old Times
The Homecoming
The Caretaker
5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Voices (audio)
By Harold Pinter and James Clarke.
Commissioned by BBC Radio for Pinter's 75th birthday in 2006, Voices is Pinter's unique and pioneering collaboration in sound and words with composer James Clarke. "We had lots of meetings," says Clarke, "in which Harold talked about the way violence can be evoked with a few economical strokes." Pinter himself described the process as one of "walking into hell together. Not just my hell, or his hell, but the hell that we all share here and now."
6:15 p.m. – 6:45 p.m.
Party Time
Directed by Harold Pinter.
This play (filmed in 1992 for Channel 4) was premiered at The Almeida Theatre in 1991 as part of a double bill with Mountain Language. London critics mocked Pinter for the play's brevity and supposed obviousness. With the recent death of a peaceful protester at the hands of masked police in London, the rarely revived Party Time has acquired the haunting quality of prophecy. Michael Billington comments: "The play offers a deadly assault on our own moral myopia."
11:00 a.m.- 9:00 p.m. Saturday May 2nd, 2009
Proshansky Auditorium (Readings/Discussion). Free!
Segal Theatre (Screenings). Free!