How I Spent 2008: a month-by-month chronicle

JANUARY

Randy produces and directs a program of conversations and staged readings on Lars Noren, one of Europe’s most produced contemporary playwrights, in collaboration with the Consulate General of Sweden and Rattlestick Theatre Company.

In How Theater Failed America at the Public Theater, solo performer Mike Daisey ridicules Randy's two-part essay on "New Swedish Voices" in the January issue of American Theatre magazine.

FEBRUARY
Randy organizes and moderates a panel discussion, "Narrative Connections: Dramaturgy, Design and New Technologies" (featured artists were Ping Chong, Kevin Cunningham, Kirby Malone and Jay Scheib) at a New York City conference organized by NoPassport, a theatre alliance and press devoted to expanding cross-cultural diversity in the arts, at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.


As a featured playwright, Randy speaks about the post-colonial legacy of the Philippine-American War in a postshow talkback at the Metropolian Playhouse in New York City.



MARCH
Cambridge University Press publishes the revised edition of Cambridge Guide to the American Theater (edited by Don Wilmeth), for which Randy contributed the first-ever encyclopedia entry on the historical contributions of Filipino-American theatre artists in the U.S, as well as essay entries on Asian-American theatre, dance in the American theatre, Nuyorican theatre, Cuban-American theatre, nonprofit resident theatre movement, and others.



Randy co-organizes and moderates a panel discussion of theatre leaders, presenters and artistic leaders of new-play festivals in the U.S. at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky. (An edited transcript of the panel appears in the October 2008 issue of American Theatre.)


APRIL
The Foundation of the American Theatre Critics Association gives Randy a travel subsidy to cover the Europe Theater Prize in Thessaloniki in northern Greece, as well as to be a U.S. delegate and speaker at the World Congress of the International Association of American Theatre Critics in Sofia, Bulgaria. (Randy's scholarly lecture about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on U.S. stages will be published in a book of essays, Theater and Humanism in Today's World of Violence, forthcoming in 2009 from the Ministry of Culture of Bulgaria.)


Randy presents his Prague Quadrennial lecture, "Storytelling By Digital Design," at the theatre department of the University of South Carolina at Columbia.




EARLY MAY

Thanks to Ellen Stewart, Randy creates a floral photography installation, In the Garden of One World, in collaboration with the Romanian stage designer Nic Ularu, at La MaMa La Galleria in New York City. This is Randy's first solo show as a visual artist. Eight photographs are sold. Here is the hyperlink to the online edition of In the Garden of One World.

Randy curates, writes and edits a heated and wildly controversial special issue devoted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the world stage that appears in the May/June international theatre edition of American Theatre magazine. (No less than Tony Kushner offers pointedly critical remarks in an April article published
in the Jewish Forward--a month before the issue ever hits the newsstands.)


LATE MAY TO EARLY JUNE
In a continuation of the American-Romanian Theatre Exchange Program with the Odeon Theater of Bucharest, Randy serves as a cultural exchange consultant for the European tour of the Filipino-American production of The Romance of Magno Rubio, which performs in two Romanian cities.

At the Sibiu International Theatre Festival in Romania, Randy delivers his new lecture-in-progress, "My America." At the same Transylvania festival, he also organizes a book launch of the play anthology roMANIA After 2000 (MESTC Press), for which he wrote an introductory essay about new Romanian playwriting.

Randy travels to Vienna to attend the Wiener Festwochen 2008, thanks to the sponsorship of Ernst Aichinger of the Ministry of Austria.

JULY
Randy's photography is featured in the 11th edition of Edwin Wilson's textbook The Theatre Experience (McGraw Hill Press).

AUGUST
The great Caridad Svich invites Randy to be a co-curator of "Dreaming the Americas 2009: Legacy and Revolution in Performance," a two-day NoPassport conference which will take place in February 2009 at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.

SEPTEMBER
A September 9, 2008 article in the New York Daily News describes Randy as “a dedicated internationalist” and “a champion of cultural exchange and dialogue. Here is the hyperlink to the Daily News profile.

OCTOBER
After a highly competitive process, Randy is selected to participate in the Nieman Seminar for Narrative Editors at Harvard University.

After another highly competitive process, Randy agrees to be an alternate for the University of Southern California Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalist Program 2008. (Everyone who was officially chosen attends the Los Angeles program; Randy remains in New York City.)

The newspaper, The Soul of the American Actor, invites Randy to lead a panel discussion with the playwright and Off-Off-Broadway legend Jean Claude Van Itallie in a daylong tribute at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Jean Claude is the only playwriting teacher Randy has ever had.

NOVEMBER
Randy serves as a jury member of the Fifth International Theatre Festival “Teatralny Koufar” in the city of Minsk in the former soviet Republic of Belarus.

Randy curates, edits and co-writes "Africa Writes Back," a special section about the current state of theatre in Africa, for the November issue of American Theatre magazine. From conception to completion, it was five years in the making.

Randy speaks in a course on "Theatre in the Age of Globalization" at Brooklyn College.

The Internationalists invite Randy to speak in a panel discussion, "Around the World in 80 Hours," along with such tribe members as Caridad Svich, Catherine Coray and Icelandic playwright Sigtryggur Magnason.

DECEMBER
Randy gives up trying to raise the funds so that he can afford to attend this month's IsraDrama Festival in Israel. This month, Israel launches a series of devastating air strikes against militants in Hamas-ruled Gaza. The all-out war is reported to be the bloodiest in Palestine since the War of 1967.

Along with emcee Ephraim Lopez and fellow writers from NoPassport theatre alliance & press, Randy reads a poem and a satirical play in Hibernating Rattlesnakes, an evening of excerpts and short works for performance, held at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

Inspired by Italo Calvino, director Marianne Weems includes Randy in a cameo video-appearance in the Builders Association's multimedia theatre piece, Continuous City, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater. The show marks Randy's BAM Next Wave Festival debut.

Randy is inducted into the Chicago Filipino American Hall of Fame 2008, sponsored by the Chicago Philippine Report TV and the VIA Times News Magazine.

Randy Gener Inducted into the Filipino-American Hall of Fame 2008

CHICAGO: We are delighted to announce that the search committee of the fifteenth annual Chicago Filipino American Hall of Fame 2008 has selected Mr. RANDY GENER to be one of the recipients of this very prestigious award in the Filipino American community of Chicago and the Midwest for his outstanding contributions in Journalism and Theatre Arts categories.



The Chicago Filipino American Hall of Fame is an inspiring project that highlights the best in the Filipino and Filipino-Americans -- a joint effort of the 20-year-old Chicago Philippine Reports TV and the 25-year-old VIA Times Newsmagazine -- an outstanding annual community event that benefits a locally produced (and original) television show in Chicago, the CPRTV. This event's other charitable recipients include the TAHANAN Philippine Museum, the Bantay Bata Foundation for homeless children of the Philippines, and the Pilipino American Social Service for Seniors.

It honors high-achieving Filipinos/Filipino Americans/& Friends, focusing on their achievements in their own field of interest or profession, and in their abilities and capabilities to promote the positive image of the Filipino not only in Chicago, but also in the entire United States of America, the Philippines, and throughout the world.


These hall of fame inductees have demonstrated uncommon, innovative, and civic responsibility, and have excelled and achieved so much for the encouragement and betterment of the Filipino/Filipino American community. They are indeed a pride to the Filipino and Asian American communities, and have served as an inspiration and role model to our people.

We salute them and their accomplishments at a black-tie dinner-dance event to be held on Saturday, December 27, 2008 at the Regency Ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Chicago Downtown, Chicago, IL, 151 E. Wacker Dr., Chicago, IL. 60601.




Sincerely yours,
Veronica Leighton
Via Times Publisher/Chief Editor
CPRTV Executive Producer

Outtakes: Moe Angelos Unplugged on "Continuous City," Nov. 18-22 at BAM Next Wave Festival

In Continuous City, the techno-fabulous new show by the Builders Association, actor Moe Angelos portrays a nanny who vblogs hilarious personal stories about her daily life, while taking care of a young girl whose father is a globe-trotting businessman whom she misses terribly.


I have loved following Moe Angelos in both the Builders shows and the Five Lesbian Brothers. In fact, when the Builders and the U.K.-based motiroti presented Alladeen at the BAM Next Wave Festival some years back, Moe actually wrote an article for me about what it is like to be a performer in Builders shows. It was a terrific personal account, as sassy and downhome funny as Moe herself is.



While I was writing "Electronic Campfires," my American Theatre magazine cover story about the Builders Association for its December edition, I had an opportunity to interview Moe more about the Builders in general, rather than specifically about her own work in the show. At the time we spoke, Moe was in San Francisco where she was vblogged for the show's Yerba Buena for the Arts premiere. I had just seen the company's presentation at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, where Moe blogged about meeting a farmer who talked to her about corn.

Heres' a scrumptious bite of undiluted Moe Angelos corn:

RANDY GENER: Why have you remained working with the Builders all these years?
MOE ANGELOS: I enjoy the challenge of creating theater pieces while simultaneously exploring the process for creating those works. The Builders are making theatre and making methods and practices and in that one small corner of my life, I am an overachiever. Plus, the kind of theater that The Builders end up producing is very different from a more traditional, text-driven narrative. How to tell a story without literally "telling" it is pretty interesting territory.


RANDY: One feedback I have read or heard say the Builders shows are not critical enough or not dialectical enough as narratives. I remember a Times review of "Super Vision" that stated the themes in the show have been explored before in other genres (George Orwell was cited) and were not investigated deep enough. Is this a fair criticism? Is narrative a weakness in Builders shows?
MOE: Oh boy! The "weak narrative" argument surfaces. I would say that the work is trying to offer our audiences live, immersive theatricalized worlds which explore what it's like to live in our Digital Age, where issues like identity and boundaries and distance are in a state of flux. Story is the way audiences are used to entering into the world presented on stage and I'd say that Marianne is trying to open another entrance into those created worlds. Yes, others like Mr. Orwell have explored this territory, but I think Marianne's goal is to get at what it feels like to live in our current world, which is now not so Brave nor New (to steal from Huxley) rather than to warn of its pitfalls. That genie is out of the bottle at this point and living with the genie among us is what I'd say it's about.


RANDY: Can you share some thoughts about other Builders founders like Dan Dobson or Peter Flaherty?
MOE: Both these gents are fantastic collaborators who are willing to give their creative talents to the greater common good of show business above and beyond the various duties that call them incessantly. It is not always an easy business, as there is much trial and error involved and steely nerves are needed, for instance, to jettison something that you have just spent hours, if not days working on in service to the show's clarity. The many many iterations that constitute the Builders' process requires both flexibility and stamina over the long haul. The Ironman Triathletes of the process, they along with the video team (Ed, Josh, Austin), the tech director Neal and our lighting associate Laura go to heroic lengths to make the magic happen. I guess we are all on some level, a quirky bunch who derive some deep satisfaction from solving the artistic problems Marianne proposes in unconventional ways.

RANDY: In what ways has Marianne grown as a director?
MOE: I'd say that Marianne has not been that interested in telling stories in conventional ways and this can result in the "narrative deficit" discussions around the work (see above). I have to hand it to her that she has listened to those criticisms and I feel has really endeavored to use narrative in a more conventional way in this show. It is not always an easy fit for her, but she has tried to do it differently this time out by working with Harry as the writer, who is much more of a narrative-Builder, capital B and small b. The artistic scope of her vision has enlarged, and she is more ambitious about the stage pictures she wants to present, always going for greater richness and depth as her personal eye develops over time. She always wants to make a simpler show and it never turns out that way!



Continuous City
The Builders Association

Directed by Marianne Weems


Conceived by:
Marianne Weems, Director
Harry Sinclair, Writer
James Gibbs, Dramaturg
Sound Design and original music composition by Dan Dobson
Video Design by Peter Flaherty
Lighting by Jennifer Tipton
Set Design by James Gibbs, Stewart Laing, and Neal Wilkinson

BAM Harvey Theater (651 Fulton St)
Nov 18—22 at 7:30pm
Tickets: $20, 30, 45, 55718.636.4100 or BAM.org

Shrek, a musical for green people of color

Funny thing about the Broadway Theatre (1681 Broadway @ 53rd St), where the new Shrek The Musical began preview performances Nov. 8. For a long time, it was Broadway's multicultural destination. If you got a musical with non-white people in it, mount it at the Broadway Theatre.

Here are examples of shows that went up there in the past 10-20 years: Miss Saigon, in which mostly Filipino Americans and some British actors performed as Vietnamese in a helicopter-heavy show about the Vietnam War; Bombay Dreams, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in the manner of Bollywood films; The Color Purple, in which an Alice Walker novel about slavery in the South was transformed into an Oprah-produced spectacular. Briefly, the Broadway theatre advertised another culturally themed show, Mambo Kings, based on the Oscar Hujelos novel, but which ultimately did not make it.

Now, the Broadway Theatre has moved on to another color of people: green people.

This special interest group presumably remains underserved, despite the existence of the musical Wicked, which won a Tony award for best musical for extolling the goodness in the hearts of green people.

Advertising itself with the banner "Bringing Ugly Back!," Shrek even opened a social network site called Shrekster to seal the deal.

Written by David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori, the musical stars Brian d'Arcy James as Shrek, Sutton Foster as Princess Fiona, Christopher Sieber as Lord Farquaad, Daniel Breaker as Donkey and John Tartaglia as Pinocchio. It is an entirely new musical based on the story and characters from William Steig’s book Shrek!, as well as the DreamWorks Animation film Shrek. Jason Moore, who staged the Tony–winning best musical Avenue Q, is the director.

SHREK THE MUSICAL is DreamWorks Animation’s first venture in legitimate theater. The production was initiated when Sam Mendes, a big fan of the first Shrek film, suggested the idea of creating a musical to DreamWorks Animation’s Jeffrey Katzenberg around the time the second film was in production. The musical is being produced by DreamWorks Theatricals (Bill Damaschke, President) and Neal Street Productions, Ltd (principals Sam Mendes and Caro Newling).

TICKET INFORMATION
Tickets for SHREK THE MUSICAL are available by calling Telecharge.com at (212) 239-6200, (800) 432-7250 outside the NY metro area, online at Telecharge.com, or in person at The Broadway Theatre box office (1681 Broadway @ 53rd St). Group sales are available by contacting Telecharge Group Sales at 212-239-6262, or 800-432-7780.

To see interviews with the cast and creative team of SHREK THE MUSICAL click the link below: http://www.shrekthemusical.com/videos.html

Election Night: Obama Vs. McCain on Arts Policy

Since today's election will decide the successor of the National Endowment for the Arts, it remains an open question whether a bill currently in the House of Representatives will pass and give the NEA a $15.3-million increase for fiscal 2009. So which candidates support the arts?

Many artists have gotten behind Democratic candidate Illinois Senator Barack Obama and his running mate from Delaware, Joe Biden.

The Obama for America National Arts Policy Committee, chaired by American Film Institute founder George Stevens Jr. and Broadway producer Margo Lion, has advised Obama on his extensive arts platform, available at www.barackobama.com.

The site says Obama would offer support for increased funding for the NEA and for amending the Internal Revenue Service code to allow artists to take full deductions (at fair market value, rather than cost of materials) on works donated to a museum or nonprofit.

No matter how impressive-looking, Obama’s policy paper is only an official position. Based on his actual record, posted on Arts Action Fund (see www.artsactionfund.org/pdf/artsvote/Obamaarts1.pdf), the Illinois senator has a history of supporting chamber music events, public-school arts-enrichment programs, poetry workshops and student outreach—but there is no mention of his active support of theatrical institutions, individual theatre artists or the NEA.

What about Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain? A steadfast critic of earmarks, congressional funds directed to special programs, McCain has not helped to direct federal funds to arts organizations in Arizona. In a Chicago Tribune article, Robert Booker, head of the Arizona Commission on the Arts, said McCain “is not a positive supporter of the arts nationally or in Arizona.” Kevin Moore, managing director of Arizona Theatre Company, adds that McCain gave ATC “a small donation” in 1998.

On his campaign website, McCain does not spell out an official policy on the arts, arts funding or arts education. The only way to assess McCain’s position is to divine the tea leaves from the very few public remarks he’s given. McCain has opposed federal funding for the NEA on the basis of “the obscene and inappropriate projects this organization has supported with tax dollars.” Instead he favors “block grants of federal funds to the states for arts education and artistic endeavors pursued by state and local authorities, while assuring that federal tax dollars are not spent on obscene or offensive material.

This past October, McCain team, however, did issue an arts-related statement in a Salt Lake Tribune article. His team said: "John McCain believes that arts education can play a vital role fostering creativity and expression. He is a strong believer in empowering local school districts to establish priorities based on the needs of local schools and school districts. Schools receiving federal funds for education must be held accountable for providing a quality education in basic subjects critical to ensuring students are prepared to compete and succeed in the global economy. Where these local priorities allow, he believes investing in arts education can play a role in nurturing the creativity of expression so vital to the health of our cultural life and providing a means of creative expression for young people."

Having used her line-item veto power to chop nearly a quarter-billion dollars from the state’s budget, Alaskan governor Sarah Palin—the Republican vice presidential candidate who has received nearly as much ink as the president-of-the-U.S. contenders—has not endeared herself to Juneau arts groups. “To my knowledge, Palin has not yet attended a show at Perseverance Theatre,” says its interim managing director, Merry Ellefson. “Sarah vetoed the Perseverance’s capital request that our legislators endorsed. It was for $25,000 for improving our dimmer system.”

Palin also vetoed this year a $100,000 funding request to assist with renovations for the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council, a former National Guard armory that the city is converting into an arts center, confirmed Nancy DeCherney, the council’s leader.

October 27 is the busiest Monday of the fall...so far

What is it about Monday Oct. 27? It has got to be the busiest theatre day of the fall. Check out these invitations I received, all for the same evening:

1) Bill Irwin, Andre De Shields, Heather McCrae and cast members of the Broadway-bound Public Theater production of Hair are scheduled to appear in a 90-minute anniversary benefit for the Workshop Theatre. The party begins 5:45 pm at the Zipper Factory, 336 West 37th Street.

2) Chris Noth (of "Sex and the City Fame"), Bebe Neuwirth ("Cheers"), Anthony Rapp, Christian Hoff (Jersey Boys), Andrea McArdle and Bobbie Eakes rub elbows today in the residence of Ron Pubuda in Central Park South. Laughs, songs and surprises are promised in this "Salon: Six Degrees of Broadway Cares," an evening to benefit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. 

3) Marylouise Burke leads a cast that includes Greg Keller, Alex Alioto, Cynthia Silver and Janne Emig in a reading of the Alex Plays by Sam Marks, described as a series of episodes chronicling the deterioration of a troubled young man. Though it's part of Partial Comfort Productions' Welcome Mat series, the reading takes place at Teatro Circulo, 64 East 4th Street.

4) Jordan Beck and Jonathan May are inviting industry people to see their musical Top 8 at the Kirk Theatre on Theatre Row today and tomorrow (Oct. 28). Eight strangers meet in cyberspace. Visit MySpace.com/Top8Musical to hear some songs and check out the developmental process.

5) As reported earlier, Jean Claude van Itallie's Tibetan Book of the Dead is getting a one-day only performance at the LaMaMa Annex Theater. The director is Kim Mancuso, with Court Dorsey, Kermit Dunkelberg and Susan Thompson in the cast. Show starts at 8 PM.

6) Playwrights Julia Jordan and Sarah Schulman are gathering a group of female playwrights at the New Dramatists on West 44th Street to discuss what to do with the under-representation of women playwrights in mainstream commercial and nonprofit theaters. It starts at 6 pm.

7) The Polish company Theatre of the Eighth Day presents a short excerpt from The Files and screenings of their past work at 6:30 PM at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center-Graduate Center, CUNY. The Files is a 2007 work based on actual secret police reports kept by the Communist state apparatus on the theatre activity of this company during the period from 1975 to 1983. 

Woven into the story are the private thoughts of the actors during the time these reports were written as well as excerpts from the performances to which the reports referred. Under the sponsorship of the Polish Cultural Institute, The Files is part of a festival of new Polish plays taking place at 59E59 Theaters through Nov. 9. In addition to The Files, the Play Company is producing a U.S. version of the Polish play Made in Poland. And the Immigrants' Theatre Project is presenting a double-bill of Sandbox and The First Time.

What's a conscientious theatre person to do?

LaMaMa E.T.C. Hosts "Tibetan Book of the Dead" Benefit, Oct. 27

Jean-Claude van Itallie needs your support. 

The legendary Off-Off-Broadway playwright wants to rebuild the ruins of his barn in Rowe, Mass., into a theatre and community center for retreats, healing and meditation. 

Once upon a time, the barn housed Shantigar Foundation, a nonprofit center, founded in 1977 and named by van Itallie’s Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Unfortunately, the cathedral-like barn burned down in 2000. 

Since then, workshops and performances have to be held in a big white tent, a wooden shed serving as office and dining space, and a large stone Buddha amidst the woodsy sanctuary’s old stone walls. “The barn is only temporarily invisible,” van Itallie says. 

The immediate need is to construct a commercial kitchen, eating space and bathrooms; the long-term plan is to build some 30 dwellings for visiting theatre artists.

To help raise funds for the barn’s reconstruction, Pilgrim Theatre, a Grotowski-trained troupe founded in Poland by Kim Mancuso and Kermit Dunkelberg, is reviving van Itallie’s 1983 stage adaptation of Tibetan Book of the Dead or How Not to Do It Again Oct. 27 at La MaMa E.T.C. Jun Maeda, La MaMa’s resident designer, has recreated the ethereal skull, built of saplings, which serve as scaffolding for the set. 

The day after the benefit, on Oct. 28, the newspaper Soul of the American Actor and City University of New York’s Martin E. Segal Theatre-Graduate Center have put together a free, daylong event, “The Theatre of Jean-Claude van Itallie,” featuring screenings and readings of van Itallie’s major works. At this event, I will be moderating a 2 PM panel discussion on America Hurrah and The Serpent.  It is free and open to the public.

THE PROGRAM

Presented by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The Graduate Center, CUNY in collaboration with Ronald Rand and The Soul of the American Actor.

THE THEATRE OF JEAN-CLAUDE VAN ITALLIE is a daylong event that features Jean-Claude Van Itallie, Preston Dyar, Wayne Maugans, Angelica Torn, Bill Coco, Lil Malinich, Ron Faber, Cynthia Harris, Joanna Rotté, Kermit Dunkleberg, Rae C. Wright, Judith Malina, Peter Goldfarb, Rosemary Quinn, Barbara Vann, Tina Shepard, Randy Gener, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Evangeline Morphos, Alex Gildzen, Mark Hall Amitin, Ruth Maleczech, Lisa Shubert, Court Dorsey, Susan Thompson, Kim Mancuso, Lois Walden, Steve Gorn, David Lewis, Didi Goldenhar, Jake Robards, Angelica Torn, Laila Robins, Grant Kertchick, Brian Murray, Lauren Bond, Alex Glizden and Lorraine Grosslight.

NEW YORK CITY, Oct. 28, 2008, 2:00 pm + 6:30 pm
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Proshanksy Auditorium, 365 Fifth Ave. at 34th St.
For More Information Click HERE.

2:00 pm 

Readings: 

War, The Hunter and the Bird, 

America Hurrah (excerpts from Interview and Motel) and The Serpent

3:00 pm 

Panel Discussion 

on America Hurrah and The Serpent, 

moderated by Randy Gener

3:45 pm 

Readings:
Bag Lady, Struck Dumb (Video excerpt with Joseph Chaikin), The Tibetan Book of the Dead and Mila, a new musical

4:30 pm 

Panel Discussion on "The Art of Collaboration": Tibetan Book of the Dead and Mila, moderated by Lois Walden

6:30 pm 

Readings: 

Excerpts from translations of 

Anton Chekhov’s plays by Jean-Claude van Itallie: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard

War, Sex, and Dreams (Video with Jean-Claude Van Itallie); Light

7:30 pm 

A Dialogue with Bill Coco and Jean-Claude Van Itallie
Reception and book signing to follow

Jean-Claude van Itallie was born in Brussels in 1936, emigrated to America with his family in 1940, graduated Harvard in 1958, and was a central force in the explosive New York off-Broadway theater movement of the sixties. 

His acclaimed America Hurrah, considered the watershed anti-Viet Nam war play, received numerous awards. He was one of the original playwrights at Ellen Stewart's LaMama, and for Joe Chaikin's Open Theater he wrote the ensemble play The Serpent. 

Van Itallie's more than thirty plays include War, Bag Lady, Almost Like Being, The Traveler, Struck Dumb and Ancient Boys. His translations of Chekhov (Chekhov, the Major Plays, Applause Books) have been widely produced in major theaters across America. 

A student of Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa since 1968, van Itallie wrote the play Tibetan Book of the Dead (premiered at LaMama, NYC 1983), published as The Tibetan Book of the Dead for Reading Aloud (North Atlantic). As an actor-writer in Guys Dreamin (Boston Center for the Arts; LaMama, 1997), van Itallie was well reviewed in The New York Times and Los Angeles Times for his one man show, War, Sex, and Dreams (Highways, Santa Monica; LaMama, 1999). 

In 2002 he received the New England Theater Conference's Special Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Theatre. His play Light (a love triangle between Voltaire, Frederick the Great, and Emilie du Chatelet) premiered in Pasadena at Theatre at Boston Court, 2004 and received several LA Critics awards. Retitled Lumieres, it is to be produced in Paris. In 2006 van Itallie's play Fear Itself, Secrets of the White House opened at Theater for the New City in New York.

Van Itallie has taught playwriting and performance at Princeton, NYU, Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Columbia, Middlebury, University of Colorado, as well as “Writing on Your Feet” and “Healing Power of Theater” workshops at Naropa, Esalen, Omega, New York Open Center, Shantigar, and many other places. He's the author of the playwriting text, The Playwright's Workbook (Applause Books). Van Itallie has transformed the farm in Western Massachusetts where he lives into Shantigar Foundation for theater, meditation, and healing (Shantigar.org).

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (MESTC), The Graduate Center, CUNY, is a non-profit center for theatre, dance, and film affiliated with CUNY's Ph.D. Program in Theatre. Originally founded in 1979 as the Center for Advanced Studies in Theatre Arts (CASTA), it was renamed in March of 1999 in recognition of one of New York City's outstanding leaders of the arts. The Center's primary focus is to bridge the gap between the academic and professional performing arts communities by providing an open environment for the development of educational, community-driven, and professional projects in the performing arts.

Ellen McLaughlin Sings

The first time I truly met the actress and playwright Ellen McLaughlin, we were having lunch at a diner near the Classic Stage Company when David Esbjornson was the artistic director.  I was interviewing her for a Village Voice article.  Ellen was in the midst of rehearsals for her play Iphigenia and Other Daughters.

As Ellen has delved deeper into playwriting over the years, the subject of war consistently haunts her work.  Yes, Ellen has stood on the shoulders of the extant Greek classics which are nothing if not violent and war-mongering.  Ellen's tough-minded, lyrically charged dramas have tackled subject of great relevance and astonishing invention.

Take for example her latest project: New York University's Gallatin School is hosting a workshop presentation of Penelope, a new music-theater piece featuring the author herself and a string quartet, With original music by Sarah Kirkland Snider, the presentations take place at NYU Gallatin School’s new Labowitz theatre, 715 Broadway, on October 29, 20, 31 and November 1st at 7 PM with a 2 PM matinee on November 1.

A plot description: "A woman's ex-husband appears at her door after an absence of 20 years, suffering from brain damage. A veteran of a modern war, he doesn't know who he is and she doesn't know who he's become. While they wait together for his return to himself, she reads him The Odyssey, and in the journey of that book, she finds a way into her former husband's memory and the terror and trauma of war."

First produced in 2008 at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Penelope will be directed by Lisa Rothe. The string quartet will be: Olivia De Prato and Amie Weiss on violin; Beth Meyers, viola and Lauren Radnofsky, cello. The lighting designer is M. L. Geiger with set design by Eliza Brown and video design by Marilys Ernst. 

Tickets for this 5-performance engagement are $10 with fee admission to NYU students presenting valid ID. Tickets are available online at www.nyu.edu/ticketcentral and can be purchased at the Ticket Central Box Office in the Kimmel Center, 60 Washington Square South, on the day of performance. Students must present ID at Ticket Central (open Mon-Fri 12:30 to 7 PM) to obtain free seats. Tickets will not be sold at the door.

Penelope will will also be presented at Princeton’s Taplin Auditorium, Washington Road, on November 4 and 5 at 8 PM. These performances are free and open to the public.

Another example: Earlier this October, Ellen premiering at the American Repertory Theatre/MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training her latest play Ajax in Iraq under the direction of Scott Zigler. Inspired by Sophocles's Ajax, Ellen took on the current U.S. war in Iraq and grappled with some important questions: "How does the experience of war affect the common soldier? What do veterans bring home from war? How have female soliders been affected by the war in Iraq?" states a prepared statement.

Ajax in Iraq is the result of a 2007 residency grant from Theatre Communications Group and the National Endowment for the Arts to develop a new play with the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theatre Training class of 2009. Over 16 months, McLaughlin spent time with an ensemble of acting students at the institute. After doing interviews and independent research, the students brought back materials dealing with civil war letters, Korean comfort women, homeless veterans, military recruitment and soldiers’ blogs. They also wrote scenes, monologues, dance pieces and created performance pieces.

A year after the workshops began, McLaughlin wrote Ajax in Iraq to fit the students who participated in the project.  Integrating what she learned from the students, who felt that the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are becoming our modern-day Vietnam, the play also re-tells a version of Sophocles’ play with a modern-day tragedy about a female soldier serving in the current Iraq war.  Some of the choral elements are based on oral interviews.  The goddess Athena narrates the evening.

War has definitely been on Ellen's mind lately.

Bonnie Marranca Unplugged

Performance Histories

By Bonnie Marranca

Performance Histories is a new collection of writings by Bonnie Marranca, co-founder of the Obie Award-winning PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, which she continues to edit. The essays and interviews in this volume cover a wide range of current issues such as performance and ethics, art as spiritual practice, the theatre of food, and avant-garde legacies in theatre and visual art performance. There is also extended commentary on Wallace Shawn, Maria Irene Fornes, The Wooster Group, and Robert Wilson and Gertrude Stein. Also featured are the author’s interviews with Susan Sontag, Robert Jay Lifton, and Peter Sellars.

Performance Histories is the author’s third collection of critical writings. Her volume entitled Theatrewritings received the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. Reviewing the book in the New York Times, Mel Gussow wrote: “In a critical field that is itself burdened with special interests, she is a free spirit.” The playwright Mac Wellman stated of her Ecologies of Theatre “she has articulated a whole new landscape. “ Edited volumes include: Plays for the End of the Century, American Dreams: The Imagination of Sam Shepard, and The Theatre of Images, one of the seminal books of contemporary theatre. The author’s writings have been translated into fifteen languages. Performance Histories is her fourteenth book.

Bonnie Marranca is a Guggenheim Fellow and Fulbright Senior Scholar who has taught and lectured in many universities here and abroad, including Columbia University, Princeton University, New York University, Duke University, the University of California-San Diego, Free University (Berlin), and Institute for Theatre (Barcelona). She is Professor of Theatre at The New School/Eugene Lang College.

PERFORMANCE HISTORIES

By BONNIE MARRANCA

ISBN: 978-155554077-7    $18.95
Published by PAJ Publications

P.O. Box 532, Village Station

NY, NY 10014 

tel/fax: 212-243-3885
Distributed by Theatre Communications Group (www.tcg.org)

Kabuki star Sakata Tojuro earns "Nobel" for theatre/film

At a formal ceremony in Tokyo this past Oct. 15, the kabuki legend Sakata Tojuro was honored with a Praemium Imperiale international arts award. The prestigious prize, which comes with 15 million yen (about $150,000), also went to Zubin Mehta, former music director of the New York Philharmonic, painter Richard Hamilton, sculptors Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, and the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor.

Presented and sponsored by His Imperial Highness Prince Hitachi, honorary patron of the Japan Art Association, the Praemium Imperiale award considers itself the Nobel for the arts, since it is annually handed out to individuals who have shown extraordinary achievement in the fields of painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and theatre/film, all categories not covered by the Nobel Prizes.



Candidates for the Praemium Imperiale awards are nominated by a distinguished panel of International Advisors and selected by the Japan Art Association. The American advisor is William H. Luers, president of the United Nations Association who, eight years ago, succeeded David Rockefeller, Jr. (who now serves as an honorary advisor). Other honorary advisors are Jacques Chirac, David Rockefeller, Helmut Schmidt, and Richard von Weizsäcker.





In other words, the Praemium Imperiale is a big deal.


Last year, the prize in the theatre/film category was awarded to the great Ellen Stewart. The indomitable founder of La MaMa E.T.C., Ellen was twice honored--first in Paris, where the winners were announced, and the second time in Tokyo, where the actual ceremony takes place. Past laureates have included Leonard Bernstein, Ingmar Bergman, Willem de Kooning, Frank Gehry, Akira Kurosawa, Robert Rauschenberg, Jean-Luc Godard, Rem Koolhaas, Mstislav Rostropovich, Christo a
nd Jeanne-Claude, Norman Foster and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.


It is intriguing that not many people know about the Imperiale prize. The first time I got to know about it was in 2002, when I was invited to a special luncheon at the Japan Society to honor the late playwright Arthur Miller who won the prize in 2001. The award that went to Miller was quite unusual because for the first time, the ceremonyu took place in New York City (as opposed to Tokyo).



It was perhaps the first and only time that the Imperiale was awarded not in Tokyo or Paris. Because of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Miller could not fly to Paris. And then his late wife, Inge Morath, suddenly took ill, which kept Miller away in October. Morath later died.


At that memorable ceremony, Miller said, "When the cannons have stopped firing, and the great victories of finance are reduced to surmise and are long forgotten, it is the art of the people that will confront future generations. The arts can do more to sustain the peace than all rhe wars, the armaments and the threats and the warnings of the politicians."


Incidentally, Sakata Tojuro is a master at both onnagata female roles and tachiyaku males roles, particularly in the works of Chikamatsu (1653-1724). His real name is Hirotaro Hayashi. For many years he was known as Nakamura Ganjiro III and then as Nakamura Senjaky. In recognition of his achievement as a major kabuki actor, Ganjiro was eventually given the name Sakata Tojuro IV. He is the fourth person to take on this moniker since the first Sakata (1647-1709), one of the actors whom Chikamatsu had considered his muse.

Have you seen what John Leguizamo's been up to lately?

John Legiuzamo is appearing in a Broadway revival of American Buffalo with the stars Cedric the Entertainer and Haley Joel Osmet. The director is the phenomenal Robert Falls.

Previews for the show begin Oct. 31. But those who might want to take a sneak peek backstage are being invited to visit the cast, crew, and creative team through the web series, American Buffalo: Backstage”.  

The online portals promises "a rare view of what really happens backstage, in rehearsal, and outside of rehearsal on a major production," says a prepared statement. On view every day are footage shot by the cast, interviews with cast, producers, and members of the production’s creative team."

Viewers may access the “American Buffalo: Backstage” series through the production’s official YouTube Channel. The videos will also be featured on American Buffalo’s MySpace page, and on its Facebook group. American Buffalo’s YouTube channel, MySpace profile and Facebook group are all accessible from the show’s official websitee.

David Mamet’s American Buffalo marks the Broadway debuts of Cedric the Entertainer and Haley Joel Osment. But for Leguizamo, one of the stage's most important actors. Using his signature rapid-style dialogue, Mamet regales us with a heist comedy about three small-time crooks conspiring to steal a rare coin from a neighborhood collector. 

American Buffalo begins previews at Broadway’s Belasco Theatre on Friday, October 31, and opens on Monday, November 17.

Report from Thessaloniki: 2008 Europe Theatre Prize

News quickly spread that the husband of German choreographer Sasha Waltz was right outside the auditorium of the Vassiliko Theatre. Since he appeared without advance notice, nobody had expected him to show up and collect his wife's 2008 Europe Theatre Prize for "new theatrical realities," which a multinational jury of European critics, theatre scholars and European Union bureaucrats had agreed to bestow upon her. Due to health problems, Waltz had to be a no-show at the annual award ceremony this past April, held for the second year in a row in the central Macedonian city of Thessaloniki in Greece.

The rules state, unfortunately, that winning artists must personally pick up the European Union Commission-funded prize, if they expect to take home the hefty money (about 20,000 euros) attached to it. Absent her physical presence, Waltz can only cop to having earned the symbolic part of the prize (a certificate plus bragging rights for being recognized as an exemplar of the new avant-garde in Europe). "For statutory and administrative reasons," prize officials stated in a prepared statement, the financial part of Waltz's prize "will be returned to the financing bodies: the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and the National Theatre of Northern Greece."

Perhaps "administrative reasons" is the key bureaucratic phrase to take note for those of us who failed to comprehend the rules of a seemingly uncompassionate game. (Wouldn't the prize money be more meaningful to an artist who has recently taken ill?) According to European observers, the organizers of the Europe Theatre Prize are beginning to be strapped for funds; it is not yet clear which ministry of what European city would be able to host and finance next year's five-day event (comprised of a ceremony, a symposium on the winners' works and their performances), if the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki eventually bows out. 

An air of finality and shrugged-off acceptance met this year's edition. Last year the German director Peter Zadek caused an uproad when a letter he wrote was read out, stating that rehearsal commitments had kept him away (one of his actors had cancer and had to drop out). Zadek was subsequently held to have forfeited his share of the top award, worth 60,000 euros, which he shared with the Canadian director and playwright Robert Lepage. This time, no scandal broke out. But irony and disappointment did surround this year's main winner, the French director Patrice Cheareau, feelings of disappointment that grew sharper during the symposia about his work. Celebrated in France, Germany and Italy for his effective use of dramatic spectacle in plays and operas (like Richard Wagner's "Ring" cycle at the Bayteurth Festival), Chereau did not present full productions, but was reduced to performing two script-in-hand readings of two plays, the best of which was "La Douleur," a text written by Marguerite Duras, read by Dominique Blanc and Chereau, and directed by Thierry Thieu Niang.

The true excitement of the 2008 Europe Theatre Prize, which was founded in 1986 to recognize individuals and organizations whose work has "contributed to mutual understanding between nations," issued out of the political stances evinced in the assorted other recognitions. The enormously gifted Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski, who presented his raw, stunning interpretation of Sarah Kane's "Cleansed," generated tremendous heat for his onstage depcitions of violence, sexual identity and taboo subjects. The German theatre collective Rimini Protokoll charmed and intrigued with its "reality-based" brand of theatre (known in Germany as "theater der zeit"), as exemplified by the company's entertaining production of Stefan Kaegi's "Mnemopark," in which four 80-year-old bricoleurs (all regular people and no actors) sketch a portrait of agricultural life in the Swiss alps by means of minimcameroas and an actual 1:87 railway model.

The scene stealers were the members of the Belarus Free Theatre, which was given an honorable mention rather than a real prize, based on a recommendation by Vaclav Havel, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. The award was a recognition of the Minsk-based company's resistance against the oppression of the Belarussian government. Belarus is not a member of the European union, and it is, according to the U.S. State Department, the only dictatorship that still exists in Europe. The Belarusian actors have been harassed, imprisoned and held in constant check by the regime. So this recognition is where the complicated matrix of politics and theatre, dis-united Europe-style, came into clear focus.

Upon receiving their special commendation, the Belarus troupe flashed victory signs on behalf of all their friends still in prison and handed Jack Lang, the former French minister of culture, an EU flag bearing the word "Belarus" on it. Such huge political gestures did not go unnoticed, and they were measured against the artistic qualities of the three shows (the monologue "Generation Jeans," the excerpt-studded tribute "Being Harold Pinter" and the overly long three-acter "Zone of Silence") that the Belarus troupe presented. Many international critics felt that, although the Belarus Free Theatre is being rightly touted as political theatre, not everything they performed at Thessaloniki was of high caliber. Free speech defenders praised the Belarus artists' sincerity and chutzpah in confronting life-and-death matters. 

When Rimini Protokoll suggested that Sasha Waltz's prize money be transferred to the Belarus Free Theater, the British critic and high-ranking Europe Theatre Prize official Ian Herbert retorted that perhaps Rimini Protokoll should considering sharing its winnings with Belarus.

With all this backstage drama and political posturing, aren't you glad there is no such thing as a U.S. Theatre Prize?

Industrial palace in Prague burns down

The left wing of the Industrial Palace in Prague has burned down. This past October 16, the ceiling of the left wing fell down. The right wing and the central hall did not catch fire. But there is a possibility that these two spaces were also damaged because of the steel construction that held the entire palace together.

No information has been given about possible reconstruction of the industrial palace, but there is a likelihood that 2011 Prague Quadrennial would be affected. The PQ team, however, is going to continue to call for applications in February 2009.

Located in the Holesovice district of Prague, the Industrial Palace was built in the Art Deco style in 1891. It is the site of many trade fairs and exhibitions.

Decision 2008: Boston Tea Party nixes arts-and-culture policy

Tom Knapp, the vice-presidential candidate for the Boston Tea Party, weighed in about this third-party's views on arts and culture. Charles Jay, the party's presidential candidate, was also asked to comment but did not reply.


AN IMPORTANT CAVEAT: This blog does not endorse any U.S. presidential candidate. It simply wants to investigate the arts and culture policies of the candidates in this year's election.


RANDY: Does the Boston Tea Party have an arts and culture policy?
TOM KNAPP: I find the idea of an "arts and culture policy" bone-chilling. The Third Reich and the Soviet Union were the kinds of countries that believe art and culture should be subject to government policy.


RANDY: What is the position of the Boston Tea Party in regard to the future of National Endowment for the Arts?
KNAPP: The primary purpose of the National Endowment for the Arts is to give conservatives a hook to hang their moral outrage on. It's absurd to hold that the NEA exercises any considerable positive influence on American arts. The 39 theatres comprising Manhattan's Broadway theatre district grossed ten times NEA's annual budget inticket sales last year. One single Sotheby's auction of a painting brought in three times the NEA's annual budget in bids. To put it bluntly, the art community itself could do what the NEA does, and ten times as much of it, by establishing a trust into whicha few of the industry's bigger players throw a fraction of a percentof the money they make. The NEA isn't about art, it's about politics. And the bottom line is this: It's not your responsibility to subsidize my tastes in art, nor is it my responsibility to subsidize your tastesin art. It's just not government's job to make that happen.


RANDY: Have you gone to see a play or musical recently?
KNAPP: Both. Here in St. Louis, I am more than happy to pay market price for tickets to Circus Flora, a show at the Fox or the Muny, etc., if that's what I want to see (and it often is).


RANDY: Have you ever helped improve the life of theatre artists in any way?

KNAPP: Every check I've written for a ticket has been cashed. Presumably some of that money found its way into the artists' pockets.

Decision 2008: views of an alternative presidential candidate (part one)

Frank McEnulty is running for U.S. president.

Never heard of him? That because he is not a Democrat or Republican but a member of the New American Independent Party.

One day prior to the McCain-Obama debate, McEnulty debated with Brad Lyttle of the U.S. Pacifist Party, Charles Jay of the Boston Tea Party, Gloria LaRiva of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Darrell Castle of the Constitution Party, and Brian Moore of the Socialist Party. The debate of the alternative candidates took place at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

AN IMPORTANT CAVEAT: Other than making certain that independent or alternative people are offered the right to speak, this blog makes no endorsement of any political party in the U.S. But since arts and culture has been pretty much the lowest in the totem pole of priorities and issues in the current presidential debate, I did take the time to investigate the views of all the presidential candidates.

The Obama people pointed me to the official position created by the Obama National Arts Policy Committee. The McCain people never replied to my emails. A few third-party candidates did respond, and Frank McEnulty, a self-described "regular guy" with "two daughter" did reply to my questions.


RANDY: Do you have an arts and culture policy or program?
FRANK McENULTY: No, I do not have an official policy or program at this time. However, I do believe that a vibrant arts scene is a very important part of any nation's well-being. I personally participate in the arts as a wood worker and wood turner. Wood-turning I find particularly artistic because I am able to allow the wood to somewhat dictate what it becomes as I turn it on the lathe.


RANDY: What is your position in regard to the future of National Endowment for the Arts?
McENULTY: I believe the National Endowment for the Arts is a very important part of what the federal government should be doing and an excellent example of what the federal government should be involved with on a national basis. In this age of continuing cutbacks throughout the nation of funding for arts programs, it is very important that the NEA continue to provide their very important funding support to state and local arts programs.

RANDY: Have you gone to see a theatre play or musical? What was the last theatre show that you saw? Did you like it enough to want to come back?
McENULTY: I thoroughly enjoy live theatre although it has been some time since I have been to a play or musical. With 2 teenage daughters who are heavily involved in both school and club sports my available time for other things is truly limited. The last live play I saw was last December, and it was called, "The History Boys." I will always avail myself of opportunities to go to live theatre.

RANDY: Have you ever helped improve the life of theatre artists in any way?
McENULTY: Only by going to their plays and promoting good things that I saw to those I know. In addition, companies I have run have in the past have owned three different concert venues, and we always went out of our way to make sure the talent had the easiest time they could hope for performing at our facilities.

Outtakes 3: a conversation with the French-African playwright and novelist Koffi Kwahulé

What follows is the last of three outtakes from a conversation I had with Koffi Kwahulé for a special section, "Africa Writes Back," which I curated, edited and wrote for the November issue of American Theatre magazine.

RANDY: How old were you when you changed your citizenship into French?

KOFFI: I became French again on December 13, 1995, so at 39. I say became French again because since I was born before 1960, the year of Ivory Coast's Independence (so during colonization), I was born French. So I asked for what is called a Reintegration.

RANDY: In an interview elsewhere, Koffi, you acknowledged that Sony Labou Tansi was your "mentor." Was Tansi truly a mentor who was a real-life friend? Or was he just an inspiration? There is a difference, you know, and sometimes they are blurred.

KOFFI: The interview where I'm supposed to have said that Sony Labou Tansi was my mentor is pure nonsense. I never met Sony while he was alive and I only read his plays after he had died. While I respect Sony's language, I don't really like the architecture of his plays, which I find too dated. In addition, Sony's work was, in my opinion, Francophonie's "thing" or alibi. Thus, all of Sony's plays were systematically produced by the Festival de la Francophonie de Limoges. It seems to me that this "comfort" didn't allow him to go beyond what the Festival expected from him, and to create much more ambitious dramaturgical work, which his incontestable talent would have allowed. As a matter of fact, since his death, his plays are not performed anymore. So, all this to say: I didn't know Sony, and he is not my mentor.

Outtakes 2: a conversation with the French-African playwright and novelist Koffi Kwahulé

The second of three outtakes from a conversation I had with Koffi Kwahulé for a special section, "Africa Writes Back," which I curated, edited and wrote for the November issue of American Theatre magazine.

RANDY: In December 1999, the Ivorian army overthrew the government. Although a common event elsewhere in Africa, this was high drama for the Ivory Coast. It was the country's first coup d'etat since independence in 1960. A major reason for the unraveling of the national fabric, embodied by the concept of Ivority (Ivoirité), was the weakening political grip of Houphouët-Boigny, the country's founding father. What, in your opinion, is his legacy?

KOFFI: First of all, I would like to specify that although I belong to the same ethnic group as Houphouët-Boigny, I feel no clemency for him; I was even censored during his rule. But today, I think he is the best thing that has ever happened to Ivory Coast. Although the Ivory Coast, unlike most African countries, had no mining resources to speak of, he managed to turn it into a promising place by opening its territory, then underpopulated and lacking qualified executives, to the arms and brains of other countries. In addition, Houphouët-Boigny’s dictatorship—it was a dictatorship—was less overtly bloody than the ones we still see today in Africa. It was a dictatorship we could describe as “soft,” in the sense that it was based on the corruption of souls, not on the corruption of bodies.

In any case, Houphouët-Boigny’s dictatorship, with the crisis helping, is generally seen today as a prosperous time in Ivory Coast. He is the father of the Ivorian miracle and the pedestal of Ivory Coast. The solid structures inherited from him have prevented the country from blowing up into pieces during the worst of the crisis. Unlike most African nations, which can’t look back at their recent history without being confronted with a series of failures and disillusions, Ivorians, faced with the current problems, know from the example left by Houphouët-Boigny that failure is not inevitable. That’s an invaluable asset for a nation.

Outtakes 1: a conversation with the French-African playwright and novelist Koffi Kwahulé

This year, Étant donnés is funding a new translation, commissioned by the Lark Play Development Center, of a play by the French-African playwright and novelist Koffi Kwahulé. The 2009 hotINK International Festival of New Plays at New York University, curated by Catherine Coray, is also throwing its lot on Kwahulé, who is originally from the Ivory Coast. The translator is the playwright Chantal Bilodeau.

What follows is the first of three outtakes from a conversation I had with Koffi Kwahulé for a special section, "Africa Writes Back," which I curated, edited and wrote for the November issue of American Theatre magazine.

RANDY: Do the French still exert a constructive influence on Ivorian arts and culture?
KOFFI: Despite a strained relationship since the Ivorian political crisis, the French's role is still prominent. For example, in all of francophone Africa and even Portuguese-speaking Africa, without the French Cultural Centers and the Alliances Françaises, there would be practically no viable cultural centers. Most festivals are sponsored by France. As for the Ivory Coast, for a few years already, this influence has become relative. Since Ivory Coast seems comparatively more wealthy than its neighbors, cultural programs are redirected toward other countries.


RANDY: Can you elaborate on the nature of this Ivorian political crisis?
KOFFI: Since 1999 and the horrifying concept of Ivoirité, there has been a coup followed by a civil war that has split the country in two: the North half controlled by the Rebels and the South half controlled by the Loyalists (government). It's this whole period that is referred to as "the Ivorian Crisis." But fortunately for a few months now, this crisis has started to look like it might be ending and the country is considering having elections in February 2009 at the latest.

Independent opinions of a jury member

I speak here as someone who has never been to Belarus. The 30-minute distance of my place of residence, a youth hostel called Raketa, from the centre of Minsk, where the performances took place, proved dispiriting to me. This made it impossible for me to seek out the theatres and churches of Minsk in a way that was independent of the other jury members. Their professions make it possible for them to return to Minsk. For me, this felt like a once-in-a-lifetime shot.

The festival's main winner was a Russian student production of "Cyrano," in which Cyrano's famous monologue, which Steve Martin transformed into a stand-up comic routine in the film "Roxanne." No one particularly thought the actor who played Roxanne gave a performance that was special, and yet the show won the hearts of the public anyway (in a tally of the audience's vote). Its professional qualities, heavy use of multimedia and large cast swayed most jury members; in the first tally, it garnered the most nominations and therefore took home a special prize. I thought it touristic and schlocky, with qualities that would fit right in a Broadway show.

My sentimental favorite was "Jakob," the Dutch entry about a young man who is seduced by her older teacher. I thought the best production was the Estonian production of Sarah Kane's "4.48 Psychosis."

One highlight of my stay in Belarus (from a professional standpoint) was visiting Sergei, the new artistic director of the Maxim Gorky National Russian Theatre. We were introduced by the playwright and screenwriter Andrei Kureichik. Sergei was an amazing force, a frank talker and a shot of fresh vibrance in a long-standing theatrical institution whose previous artistic leader retired only last year after almost three decades of stewardship.

I wish I had time to meet the folks behind the Belarussian National Theatre.

Lenin's statue

Few buildings in Minsk survived the wars. Among the ones that did survive were Orthodox and Catholic churches. Many older buildings had been recently restored to their pre-war state. Others were built from scratch in the same styles and on the original sites. (In this latter respect, the restoration of Minsk resembles how the older palaces of Seoul were returned back to their original glory. The only difference is that Minsk is not marred by the crowded skyscrapers and riots of neon billboards in South Korea.)

The Belarussian State University occupies a gray behemoth swathe of the centre, located on Sovetskaya street, a long stone's throw away from the popular landmark status of Lenin in front of the House of Government. In the evening, the building is very difficult to traverse from one end to the other; I got tired walking across the plaza in front of it, as I tried to reach the older part of Minsk. It did not help that the gates of the park were closed, so I couldn't cut through, as I was able to in the day time.

The BSU campus encompasses several nearby buildings. The rector's office is located at a red-brick structure across the garden. The Lyceum is about a 15 to 20 minute walk away.

Lenin stands tall in Ploshad Nezavisimosti. Erected across the wide avenue from the BSU colossus, Lenin has overlooked Independence Square since 1933. The seven metre high monument is by Aleksander Grube who designed the first public statue of Lenin in the USSR, which was erected in the Belarusian town of Krasnopole in 1922.

Minsk, a city at night

Minsk is a gorgeous city. Especially in the center, close to the presidential building which doubles as the leader's residence, the avenues are clean and wide and safe and grand-looking. The restored pre-war buildings echo the styles of older architectures (Classical, Baroque and Gothic), and they harmoniously hum with the park zones and the gargantuan concrete Soviet-style structures.

I found Minsk at night to be peaceful. It is walkable, if you have the leisurely time to do so and good walking shoes (I did). Otherwise, it will daunt you. As you go walk out the centre, the sameness of the Soviet-style buildings stretch out into infinity. If you head the other direction (to the older areas of the city, called upper Minsk), the sights are livelier, more eclectic and drop-dead charming.

If Minsk were a person, it would be a dark-haired, handsome but passive-bodied man. Dressed in a suit, he is sipping a cup of cappuccino at the News Cafe, not far from the president's residence. He's got a sophisticated style. His face is hopeful and unmoving.

What's Alexander Lukashenko's problem?

You can't take a photo of the president's residence in Minsk. It is forbidden. But it is not illegal.

When I approached his residence with my camera, the guards who patrolled all four sides of the building shooed me away. I tried to take photos of the residence from behind a metal fence in the park across the street, but I was spotted by a guard, and he looked at me with such anger in his eyes that it freaked out my interpreter who advised that we walk briskly away. He was afraid that the guard would cross the street and run after us.

Located in the heart of Minsk, Lukashenko's residence is at the intersection of the streets named after Marx, Engels, Komsomol (the youth wing of the Communist party) and Kirov (a senior Communist Party member and comrade of Stalin's, who was murdered on the latter's orders). It is supposed to be the most closely guarded place in the country, since all the roads leading to the area are said to be sealed off to vehicular traffic. True, there was no traffic nearby the residence, but cars did occasionally stop at nearby streets, and a few did cruise by visibly.

Unlike the White House, which is separated from the public by a huge park and garden area, Lukashenko's residence sits right on the streets. A sidewalk separates it from the streets. It is quite possible to walk on the sidewalk. I managed to take a few photos while hiding behind the column of a theatre building located from across the street. Okay, so I was a little obsessed, but I wasn't Michael Moore-obsessed.

A little bit of a reality check is important to state here. Visitors in Minsk ought to know, a Belarusian friend told me, that security matters are very important. After all, my friend said, with the residence's proximity to the streets, it would be easy for someone to plan an attack on the residence using the disguise of being a tourist.