FALL 2008 progams

International theatre series

Theatre of the Eighth Day/ The Files (Poland)

Join us for an evening with Poland’s venerable Theatre of the Eighth Day from Poznan. The company will discuss their new work The Files–an avant-garde docudrama which uses real Communist-era police files kept on the theatre company by the secret police to reveal the extent of government surveillance and harassment they endured. Featuring founding members, actors and designers from Theatre of the Eighth Day. Moderated by Carol Martin, NYU.

Co-presented by the Polish Cultural Institute in New York. The Files will be presented during the MADE IN POLAND festival at 59E59 Theaters this fall.

Theatre of the Eighth Day: Founded as a student theatre at the University of Poznan in 1964, by the 1980s the Theatre of the Eighth Day had become the most famous of the underground alternative theatre groups, initially performing drama and poetry. The development of a more physical, non-verbal theatre stemmed from their association with one of the practitioners of Grotowski’s laboratories and the experience of the student protests of March 1968. Their theatre is non-linear, without cause-and-effect, with the texts and actions created solely through group improvisation. The group's name derives from the Polish poet Konstanty Ildefons Galczynski: "On the seventh day, the Lord God rested, and on the eighth, He created theatre.”

The Polish Cultural Institute, established in New York in 2000, is a diplomatic mission to the United States dedicated to nurturing and promoting cultural ties between the United States and Poland, both through American exposure to Poland 's cultural achievements, and through exposure of Polish artists and scholars to American trends, institutions, and professional counterparts. The Institute takes an active collaborative role in a broad range of cultural events in theatre, music, film, literature, and the fine arts.

6:30 p.m., Monday, October 27, 2008 Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!

Aurelien Bory + Phil Soltanoff / Nouveau Cirque in Contemporary Performance France, USA)

Join us for an evening with Aurelien Bory and Phil Soltanoff, moderated by Bertie Ferdman. Nouveau Cirque is a growing international phenomenon, especially predominant in France, that blends theatre, dance, music, and traditional circus skills into one unique performance experience. The event will focus on Bory and Soltanoff's creations as well as collaborations, where taskbased performance, including acrobatics, geometry, and virtuoso juggling, are used as the main theatrical language.

Aurelien Bory was born in 1972 and lives and works in Toulouse. His theatre combines space and performing arts. Artistic director of compagny 111, Bory conceived and still performs a trilogy about space, of which IJK (created in 2000) is the first episode. Then followed Plan B(2003) and Plus ou moins l'infini(2005), which he created in collaboration with director Phil Soltanoff. In China in 2007, Bory created Les sept planches de la ruse, his seventh piece, composed with Beijing Opera actors from Dalian.

Phil Soltanoff is the director of mad dog experimental. His latest work, i/o, in collaboration with sound artist Joe Diebes, premieres at Theatre Garonne in November 2008. He is also executive director and co-founder (along with performing artist Hanne Tierney) of Five Myles, the OBIE-award winning alternative performance/exhibition space in Brooklyn, NY. Phil Soltanoff has created two works in collaboration with Aurelien Bory and CIE111: Plan B and More or Less, Infinity.

Bertie Ferdman is a student in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is artistic co-director of performance company Ex.Pgirl, currently in residence at HERE Arts Center. Bertie teaches movement and theatre at City College and Manhattanville. She is founder of The Center for Research in Theatre and Urban Development.

Les sept planches de la ruse will be presented at BAM, Brooklyn Academy of Music, November 5, 7 & 8, 2008. The presentation at BAM is supported by BNP Paribas, Etant donnes: The French-American Fund for the Performing Arts, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, and CulturesFrance.

6:30 p.m., Monday, November 3, 2008, Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!

Kama Ginkas + John Freedman/ Chekhov Stories (Russia)

Join us for an evening with renowned Russian director Kama Ginkas, who, with John Freedman and Daniel Gerould, will discuss his theatrical adaptations of prose works by Anton Chekhov. In collaboration with Yale School of Drama.

Kama Ginkas has made a career of creating powerful theatre based on the prose of classic Russian authors, including Fyoor Dostoevsky, Alexander Pushkin and Chekhov. His famous Chekhov trilogy– Lady with a Lapdog, The Black Monk and Rothschild’s Fiddle–emerged as one of the most celebrated achievements in Russian theatre in the 1990s and 2000s. An early adaptation of Ward No. 6 under the title of The Theatre of the Watchman Nikita formed the basis for an influential production in Finland in the late 1980s.

Ginkas’s dramatizations–although they rarely change anything in the original text–are never examples of narrative literary theater. By breaking up the text and distributing it among actors in unexpected ways; by translating description into dynamic action; and by bringing out concealed character motivations in performance, Ginkas reveals the highly dramatic nature of non-dramatic works. Excerpts of some of Ginkas’s Chekhov dramatizations will be presented in readings prepared especially for this evening.

Kama Ginkas was born in 1941 in Kaunas, Lithuania. His acclaimed productions for Moscow's New Generation Theatre have been performed at theatre festivals all over the world. In the United States he staged Lady with a Lapdog at the American Repertory Theatre and the Guthrie Theatre. He mounted the world premiere of his dramatizataion of Rothschild’s Fiddle at Yale Repertory Theatre. His production of K.I from “Crime” has been performed at the Bard College Summerscape Festival and in a month-long run Off-Broadway.

John Freedman is an American writer and translator based in Moscow. He has been the theatre critic of The Moscow Times since 1995. With Ginkas he co-authored the book Provoking Theatre: Kama Ginkas Directs.

Daniel Gerould is Executive Director of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center and Lucille Lortel Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature, The Graduate Center, CUNY.

6:30 p.m., Monday, November 17, 2008 Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!

Caribbean Playwright Exchange/ Soho Think Tank

Join us for evening with readings of excerpts from new works by Pascale Anin, Arielle Bloesch and Curtis Clarendon, three emerging writers from the Caribbean. These three playwrights will be paired for a week in New York with their American translator, three downtown directors, and a cast of American actors for a staged reading at the Segal Center. Two of the plays have been translated into English by Philippa Wehle in a two-year partnership with ETC Caraibe. Following the New York readings, ETC Caraibe will reverse the process in 2009, bringing three New York playwrights to Guadeloupe.

The evening is presented by the Segal Theatre Center in collaboration with Robert Lyons from Soho Think Tank, Danielle Vende of ETC Caraibe (Guadeloupe), and Philppa Wehle. With support from the Henri Peyre French Institute, The Graduate Center, CUNY, Professor Francesca Sautman.

The Caribbean Playwright Exchange is a partnership between Soho Think Tank, New York with ETC Caraibe (Guadeloupe) and The US-Caribbean Exchange of Playwrights. Coordinated by Ohio Theater and Artchipel with sup port from the Laura Pels Foundation; Etant donnes: The French-American Fund for the Performing Arts; Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, New York.

Soho Think Tankis the OBIE Award-winning downtown theatre company, now entering its 15th year of programming, presenting, and producing the work of pioneering new artists at the Ohio Theatre in New York.

Ecritures Theatrales Contemporaines en Caraibe(ETC Caraibe) is an organization in the Caribbean whose mission is the discovery and promotion of new Caribbean playwrights and the distribution of their scripts. ETC Caraibe also organizes playwrighting workshops for contemporary Caribbean theater writ ers throughout the Caribbean as well as special events such as festivals, col loquia, panels and competitions.

Danielle Vende is artistic director of ETC Caraibe(Ecriture theatrale contempo raine en.Caraibe), an association devoted to the discovery of new playwrights based in the Caribbean. Its objective is also to promote their work through staged readings and full productions in regional, national and international venues. Jose Pliya is artistic director of ETC Caraibe(Ecriture theatrale con temporaine en.Caraibe), an association devoted to the discovery of new play wrights based in the Caribbean. Its objective is also to promote their work through staged readings and full productions in regional, national and inter national venues.

Pascale Anin is an actor, director and playwright. Her first piece And I Thank God is a Woman was a great success at the Festival d’Avignon in 2007. In her work, she explores issues of child soldiers and the power of motherhood. In her play Les immortels,a married couple is waiting for a child. At first glance it looks like an every day occurrence, but a strange atmosphere of remorse hangs over them. Who is the young man called Simon? What’s hap pening in their friend Hermann’s mind? Why did they move to France? What are they running away from?

Arielle Bloesch was born in Switzerland in 1963. After studying in Paris, she worked as an actress, but quickly moved into directing and founded the theatre company Metitheatre. Since moving to Martinique in 2000, she has worked with ETC Caraïbe as a playwright. In her play Port d’ames, the King’s three sons are fed up with hard work, preferring to take advantage of their princely status. So they murder their father, setting the course for a brutal struggle for power.

Curtis Clarendon, born on the British Island Dominique, has written many plays which deal with the passions and torments of his native country in a way that mixes sensitivity and intensity. He is also a director and an actor. In his play Shellie, apastor father lives with his only son. The son cannot accept his mother’s death. The father cannot accept the son’s love for another man. Set in the West Indies, somewhere between power and incomprehension.

Robert Lyons, founding Artistic Director of the Ohio Theatre, is a writer/ director whose work includes The Doorman’s Double Duty, No Meat No Irony, and PR Man. New York productions include commissioned adaptations rang ing from Dostoevsky’s The Possessed and The Fever to Jay McInerney’s How it Ended. His work as a director has been seen at The Public, The Vineyard Theater, DTW, and other venues in NYC and around the country. Under Robert Lyons's leadership, the Ohio Theatre has become widely recognized as a pillar of the downtown theatre community.

Translator Philippa Wehle is Professor Emeritus of Drama Studies and Language and Culture, Purchase College, State University of New York, and author of Le théâtre populaire selon Jean Vilar(Actes Sud, 1991), Drama Contemporary: France (PAJ, 1986), and Contemporary Plays from France (PAJ, Fall 2007). She has also translated many contemporary French-language plays (by Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, José Pliya, Philippe Minyana and others). Dr. Wehle is a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.

6:30 p.m., Monday, November 24, 2008 Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!

Concubine Sultan Hurrem
Image courtesy of the artist

Kai Hensel/ Klamm’s War and Which Is the Best Drug for me? (Germany)

Please join us for an evening with German playwright Kai Hensel and monologues from his plays Klamm’s War and Which is the Best Drug for Me? Hensel’s plays have received more than 150 productions in Germany, Switzerland and Austria and have been translated into several languages. Directed by Andreas Robertz. With support from the Goethe-Institut, New York.

Kai Hensel was born in Hamburg in 1965. He worked in an advertising agency before starting a career as a scriptwriter for TV and Cinema. Hensel has writ ten scripts for numerous serials and–sometimes award winning–movies. His plays have been produced in theatres throughout Germany, translated into several languages and adapted for radio broadcast. When abroad, Hensel also works as a freelance travel journalist for major newspapers and magazines.

Andreas Robertz is an established German theatre director who has directed and produced more than 40 shows. Robertz developed his expertise while working as Artistic Director of the Children’s and Youth Theatre of the City Theatre of Münster. He later served as Artistic Advisor for the City of Cologne Arts Council and as Resident Director at the Artheatre Cologne. In Cologne, he produced and directed a number of contemporary American, Canadian, and English plays to critical acclaim. Robertz currently works in Germany and New York City, where he has worked with the Immigrants Theatre Project and the Jewish Theatre. He is a member of Lincoln Center Directors Lab 2008 and Artistic Director of OneHeart Productions New York.

The Goethe-Institut Digital Library of Theatre is offering an innovative new access to translations of contemporary German plays. Visit the website www.goethe.de/theaterbibliothek click on the English version, and you will find a list of available translations that can be ordered easily via e-mail for free. The Library of Theatre consists already of more than 60 titles, from Igor Bauersimas norway.today in Italian to Urs Widmers Top Dogs in Chinese.

6:30 p.m., Monday, December 15, 2008 Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!

New Plays from Japan by Matsuda Masataka, Mikuni Yanaihara + Akio Miyazawa
*Off-Site* Spotlight Japan Festival/ CVS Cultural Center, 107 Suffolk St., NY

Join us for an afternoon discussion and celebration of the Spotlight Japan Festival: Facing the New World, featuring new works in translation by three aesthetically and socially provocative Japanese playwrights: Masataka Matsuda, Akio Miyazawa, and Mikuni Yanaihara. The festival will highlight a new generation of Japanese Authors directed by a new generation of American Directors/Companies. Inspired by last year’s SPOTLIGHT JAPAN at PRELUDE 07, which paired four contemporary Japanese playwrights with New York directors to present the first English-language presentations of their work. The Play Company is planning a New York production of Toshiki Okada’s Enjoy for the fall of 2009.Made possible with support from the Japan Foundation, NY.

Spotlight Japan Festival: Facing the New World will feature full productions of The Blue Bird, directed by Dan Safer/Witness Relocation; Masataka Matsuda's Auto-da-fe, directed by Josh Fox/International WOW Company; and a staged reading of Akio Miyazawa’s At the Entrance of New Town byJay Scheib.

INTERNATIONAL WOW COMPANY: Founded in 1996 by a group of theatre and dance artists from Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, and the US, International WOW Company has created over 40 new plays, consistently lauded as ambitious, inventive, and visually stunning. The company develops works that position community and culture in an international context and redefine the dramatic event in the changing landscape of globalization. Over the past 12 years, International WOW has become a pioneer of international theatre exchange, incorporating performance methods from the East and West, and forging an interdisciplinary training for actors.

Witness Relocation formed in 2000 and is led by director/choreographer Dan Safer. The critically acclaimed company has created over ten original productions, engaged in a two year residency at the renowned Patravadi Theatre in Bangkok, Thailand, and performed in theaters, nightclubs, rock videos, and on a Thai TV Soap Opera. They are based in New York City, and work internationally.

The CSV Cultural Center is a Puerto Rican/Latino cultural institution with a broad-minded cultural vision and a collaborative philosophy.

5:00 p.m., Saturday January 10, 2008. Free! First come, first served.

*Off-Site*: CVS Cultural Center, 107 Suffolk Street

Kantor Symposium: The Art and Theatre of Tadeusz Kantor (Poland)

Join us for an international symposium focusing on the art and theatre of one of the most important theatre figures of the 20th century, Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990). With Daniel Gerould and other international scholars, tba. Co-presented and supported by the Polish Cultural Institute, NY.

To say of Kantor that he is among Poland’s most outstanding artists of the second half of the twentieth century is to say very little. Kantor is to Polish art what Joseph Beuys was to German art, what Andy Warhol was to American art.

Jarosław Suchan, director of Museum of Art in Łódź,curator of Tadeusz Kantor. Interior of Imagination,
Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw 2005

Tadeusz Kantor(1915-1990) was one of the greatest artists of the 20th century– a “total artist,” as he used to say, and with good reason, so great was his ver satility. A painter, stage designer, poet, actor, and happener, he made a name for himself as a man of theatre, but even in this domain he remained first of all a painter who thought with images and used actors and props instead of paints. His Cricot 2 Theatre’s performances, beginning with Dead Class (1975), were hailed as true masterpieces.

The Kantor Symposium is a part of presentation of Tadeusz Kantor’s art and theatre, which will include: his installation Dead Class, recently purchased by the Jewish Museum and now part of its exhibition Absence (November 9, 2008-February 1, 2009), and filmed records of his past performances at La MaMa and now projected in the same space (November 10-16, 2008, 7:30 p.m.)

2 p.m. 8 p.m., Monday, January 26, 2008 Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!

Urwintore/ Peter Weiss’ The Investigation(Rwanda)

Join us for an evening with director Dorcy Rugamba and members of the Urwintore theatre company. In The Investigation, a cast of Rwandan actors per forms Peter Weiss’s compelling reconstruction of the Frankfurt war crimes tri als concerning the role of German citizens in the atrocities of Auschwitz.

Performed in Kinyarwanda (with English subtitles) by Urwintore and directed by Dorcy Rugamba, Weiss’s 1965 play about the German Holocaust takes on universal power as it becomes a conceit for the horrifying genocide that destroyed Rwanda in 1994. Presented with the support of Peak Performances @Montclair State University (www.peakperfs.org). Full production at MSU's Alexander Kasser Theater February 5-8, 2009.

Dorcy Rugamba is an author, actor, and director, as well as a dancer trained in traditional Intore dance. Rugamba left Rwanda on April 21, 1994, one week after his family was killed during the Batutsi genocide. Settling in Brussels, he studied at Belgium’s Conservatoire Royal du Musique de Liege and in 1999 co-authored Rwanda 94, first performed at the Festival d’Avignon by the Belgian company Groupov. Other works include the play Bloody Niggars! and Marembo, an account of his family’s last days in Rwanda.

Urwintore was founded by Dorcy Rugamba in 2001 as a workshop for creation and research in the performing arts. Urwintore’s production of The Investigation was developed in 2005 and has been performed in Butare and Kigali, Rwanda, and at the Festival Emulation, Liège; the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, Paris; and at the Culture Center of Ans, Belgium. The company members are all survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

6:30 p.m., Monday, February 2, 2008Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!

Dorcy Rugamba
Photo courtesy of the artist

Toshiki Okada/ Five Days in March (Japan)

Join us for an inside look at the works of writer/director Toshiki Okada, founder of chelfitsch theater company, one of the most visible companies in Japan right now. Moderated by Kate Loewald (Artistic Director, The Play Company) with translator Aya Ogawa. The Play Company will produce Okada’s Enjoyin 2009.

Toshiki Okada was born in Yokohama City in 1973 and graduated from the Business Department of Keio University. In 1997 he founded chelfitsch, named after a child’s mispronunciation of the English word “selfish.” Through a unique methodology of play-making, Okada created all the works by the company, incorporating “super real” Japanese language and exaggerated body movement.

Known for the juxtaposition of super-colloquial dialogue and movement- choreography derived from mundane activities,chelfitschtheatre company has become the very representative of youth culture in the Japanese contemporary theatre scene. Their work epitomizes the current infantilized culture and society of contemporary urban Japan. The seminal works of the company include On the Harmful Effects of Marijuana(2003), Post the End of Suffering (2005) and Cooler (Air Conditioner), which was a finalist in the 2005 Toyota Choreography Awards.

Five Days in March, which will be presented at Japan Society February 5-7 at the end of its Society-produced North American tour, is a prestigious Kishida Kunio Drama Award-winning play by Okada, telling the story of two urban hipsters who meet at a post-rock show and then get swept up into a one-night stand that turns into five days of continuous sex.

Japan Society: Since 1953, Japan Society’s Performing Arts Program has presented over 500 events of the finest Japanese theatre, dance and music both traditional and contemporary.

6:30 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2008 Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!