Events > International/World Theatre > Howard Barker at the Segal Center (The Wrestling School, UK)
Howard Barker at the Segal Center (The Wrestling School, UK)
The work of Howard Barker, one of the most controversial English-language dramatists, directors and theatre theoreticians of our time, will be celebrated in this day-long event on Monday, May 10th at the Segal Center. Barker, along with his frequent collaborator actress Victoria Wicks and critic David Ian Rabey, author of a two-volume study of Barker's work, will make a rare visit to the United States specifically for the event, which is being co-presented by the Segal Center and the theatre minima company.
All of the day's activities will be free and open to the public.
The schedule will include screenings, readings, panel discussions and a one-on-one conversation with the dramatist, who has been called "Britain's greatest living dramatist" by the London Times and "the Shakespeare of our age" by Sarah Kane. Scheduled to participate in the celebrations proceedings are Drama Desk award winner and Tony nominee Jan Maxwell (2009 Drama Desk nominee for Barker's Scenes from an Execution), playwright Mac Wellman, Red Bull Theater artistic director Jesse Berger, Wrestling School associate Richard Romagnoli, and Barker Project co-founder Robert Emmet Lunney. The proceedings for the entire day will be curated by George Hunka, artistic director, theatre minima.
Since the debut of his play Cheek at the Royal Court in 1970, Barker has dedicated his career to a profound questioning of the place of theatre and tragedy in contemporary culture, and many of his plays, including Scenes from an Execution, Gertrude — The Cry, Victory and The Castle, have achieved the status of masterpieces of contemporary theatre. His book of theory, Arguments for a Theatre, continues to inspire theatre practitioners around the world. In 1988 Barker formed his own company, The Wrestling School, the 21st anniversary of which was celebrated in 2009 with 21 for 21, a global event that featured performances of Barker's plays from Seattle to South Africa, and a Barker season of plays at Paris' Odeon theatre. Barker remains a profound influence on two generations of international theatre artists.
The current schedule of events, subject to change, is as follows:
1.00pm: A screening of Refuse to Dance, an hour-long 1988 BBC documentary about the playwright that provides an overview of Barker's early work.
2.15pm: Screening of three excerpts from Barker's recent directorial work with The Wrestling School.
3.30pm:"Howard Barker in America," a panel discussion about the production and dissemination of Barker's plays in the U.S., featuring Drama Desk Award winner and Tony-nominated actress Jan Maxwell, American experimental playwright Mac Wellman, artistic director of the Red Bull Theatre Jesse Berger, and Potomac Theatre Project co-artistic director Richard Romagnoli, an artistic associate of the Wrestling School.
4.45 - 6.30pm: Dinner break.
6.30pm: Readings of scenes from several recent plays by Barker, directed by Jesse Berger, artistic director of the Red Bull Theatre.
7.30pm: "A Conversation with Howard Barker," a one-on-one discussion with Barker conducted by one of his most incisive critics and a performer and director of Barker's work, Prof. David Ian Rabey of the University of Aberystwyth, Wales.
8.30pm: A reading by Barker of his most recent poetry.
ADDITIONAL INTERNET RESOURCES
Howard Barker
The Wrestling School
21-for-21 Festival
Howard Barker
Image courtesy of the artist
Howard Barker was born in a working class family in South London in 1946. His first stage play was performed in 1970 at the Royal Court. Subsequently, his works were played by the Royal Court, Royal Shakespeare Company, The Open Space Theatre, Sheffield Crucible and the Almeida. His early nausea with social realism, his embracing of tragedy ‘the greatest art form known to man’, his poetic discourse, and what he calls ‘a suffocating unanimity of critical and theatre opinion’ served to isolate him from mainstream theatre in this country, whose culture he describes as ‘utilitarian, entertainment-obsessed and awash with moral platitudes.’ Such a solitude has been compensated by a powerful and growing international reputation and the formation of a company specifically created to develop his theories of theatre, ‘The Wrestling School’. Barker sees his mission as developing a ‘conscience-free, speculative, tragic theatre speaking its own language …’ He describes his greatest achievement as earning world-wide status without compromising his principles. He is currently Artistic Director of The Wrestling School, a company established to disseminate his works and develop his theory of production. His work is played extensively in Europe, in translation, in The United States, and in Australia . He is the author of plays for marionettes and has written three librettos for opera. Howard Barker is the author of two works of theory, and five volumes of poetry. He is also a painter. His work is held in national collections in England (V&A, London) and Europe.
theatre minima was founded in 2006 with the intent of stripping the theatre to its essential elements – the living body and the spoken word – in recovering the original urge of the art to describe the tragedy of bodied human experience; to suggest a redemption from suffering through heightened narrative, lyricism, and the body; to explore through scripted drama and performance the tensions between the spirit and the body, tragedy and comedy, love and violence, the noumenal and the phenomenal, Eros and Thanatos. Its fall 2010 production will be What She Knew, a play about Oedipus and Jocasta, written and directed by George Hunka.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!