NoPassport Press Celebrates the Release of 12 Collected Plays and Single Edition Works

NEW YORK CITY:  Seven collected plays under the NoPassport press imprint will be launched on Thursday February 25 at ACROSS THE UNIVERSE WITH NoPASSPORT PRESS, a conversation and book presentation moderated by New York writer and editor Randy Gener.  

Join playwrights Oliver Mayer, John Jesurun, Mathew Maguire, Amparo Garcia-Crow, Alejandro Morales, Chiori Miyagawa, Caridad Svich and press editors Otis Ramsey-Zoe and Stephen Squibb for a conversation & celebration of publications of their plays from NoPassport. This event takes place 6:00–8:00pm at New Dramatists (424 West 44^th Street, bet. 9^th and 10^th Aves.). Admission for this event is free.  For information, call (212) 757-6960. For further information contact NoPassportPress@aol.com.

This book launch is a pre-conference launch for the 2010 NoPassport Conference. DREAMING THE AMERICAS: UTOPIA IN PERFORMANCE at Nuyorican Poets Cafe is a two-day conference with the support of The Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance, Idiom, The Internationalists, 50/50 in 2020, Conni's Avant-Garde Restaurant, and New Dramatists. 

Join Migdalia Cruz, Erik Ehn (Brown University), Randy Gener , Henry Godinez (Goodman Theatre), Jeff Janisheski (O’Neill Theater Institute), Lisa D'Amour, Catherine Filloux, Karen Hartman, Melanie Joseph (Foundry Theatre), Jeff McMahon, Oliver Mayer, Chiori Miyagawa, Katie Pearl, J.T. Rogers, Ian Rowlands, Alberto Sandoval, Octavio Solis, Saviana Stanescu, and a distinguished roster of established and emerging artists for the fourth annual NoPassport “Dreaming the Americas” Conference held at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York City with pre-conference event at New Dramatists.

RANDY GENER is the New York writer, poet, editor, playwright and visual artist.  A lecturer and public speaker, Gener recently gave the keynote speech at the 2009 Swedish Theatre Biennial.  He is a co-founder and editorial board member of a new international web journal, Critical Stages, at www.criticalstages.org. He is a core member, an editorial board member and a series editor of NoPassport theatre alliance & press. Gener has been praised by the New York Daily News as an “internationalist, a champion of cultural exchange and dialogue” and by Instinct magazine as “the visionary.” 

NoPe - NoPassport Conference SCHEDULE

DREAMING THE AMERICAS: UTOPIA IN PERFORMANCE

NoPassport and Nuyorican Poets Cafe present a two-day conference with the support of The Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance, Idiom, The Internationalists, 50/50 in 2020, Conni's Avant-Garde Restaurant, and the Lark Play Development Center, and the cooperation of New Dramatists.  

Pre- Conference Event:

FEBRUARY 25, 2010 at New Dramatists, 424 W. 44^th St, NYC from 6-8 PM

Across the Universe with NoPassport Press, Moderated by Randy Gener

 Join Tanya Barfield, Oliver Mayer, John Jesurun, Mathew Maguire, Amparo Garcia-Crow, Alejandro Morales, Chiori Miyagawa along with press editors Otis Ramsey-Zoe, Stephen Squibb and Caridad Svich for a celebration of publications of their plays from NoPassport.

*Admission to this event is free.

Conference @ Nuyorican Poets Café/NY

Fri. February 26, 2010 11:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.

& Sat. February 27, 2010 11:00 a.m. – 6:30 p.m.  

For further information contact NoPassportPress@aol.com  

 

Preliminary Schedule–Program is subject to radical change

FEBRUARY 26, 2010 Panels:

 11:00 AM WELCOME/OPENING REMARKS

with DANIEL BANKS (DNAWORKS), DANIEL GALLANT (Executive Director, Nuyorican Poets Cafe), CARIDAD SVICH (Playwright; founder, NoPassport)

 

11:30 AM-12:50 PM APPLIED THEATRE: GENOCIDE DRAMA IN COMMUNITY 

Moderated by BIANCA BAGATOURIAN (Playwright & President of Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance) and MEGAN MONAGHAN (Dramaturg)

Panel: MARCY ARLIN (Immigrants Theater Project), STACIE CHAIKEN (Storyteller/Performer),ERIK EHN (Playwright), CHRISTINE EVANS (Playwright, to be confirmed), CATHERINE FILLOUX (Playwright), J.T. ROGERS (Playwright), DAWN AKEMI SAITO (Storyteller/Dancer), KELLY STUART (Playwright),

*This is an Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance session.

 

1:00-1:45 PM KEYNOTE by ERIK EHN: UTOPIA IS THE SHADOW OF DISASTER

Erik Ehn is Head of Playwriting at Brown University, and former Dean of California School of the Arts.

 We are in the middle of an extraordinary time, if utopia is understood to include moral diversity (heaven and hell). The ways in which we are being disregarded, forced into strange shapes, misunderstood, privileged, urged - are now (briefly) the fracture that permits growth. Making art in holy shadow in obedience to disaster.

2:00-2:45 PM LUNCH with CONNI'S AVANT-GARDE RESTAURANT

This special lunch/performance costs $10 (separate from registration and at event only).

Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant (a Village Voice Choice and Time Out New York favorite), is not a locale but a group of bold (if fictional) theatrical performers, devoted to the ongoing celebration of the work of Conni Convergence, the beloved icon of stage and screen. Hailed as “devilish dinner theatre” by The New York Daily News, these unique theatrical-culinary events mix the ingredients of fine food and drink, brash Vegas-style song and dance spectacle, and a loving sendup of avant-garde pomposity. www.avantgarderestaurant.com

3:00-5:00 PM IMMERSIVE THEATRE: SITES OF MEMORY/PRACTICE

Moderated by Tamilla Woodard and Jake Witlen

Panel: MELANIE JOSEPH (Artistic Director, The Foundry), MALLORY CATLETT (director), STEPHEN SQUIBB (C-Artistic Director, Woodshed Collective), LISA D'AMOUR (Playwright), KATIE PEARL (Director/Performer), IVAN TALIJANCIC (Artistic Director, Wax Factory), IAN ROWLANDS (Playwright, Advisor, Welsh Arts Council), MELISSA FENDELL (Founder, The Anthropologists) and more TBA

*This is an Internationalists session.

5-6 PM DINNER BREAK

6 PM HENRY GODINEZ (Goodman Theatre): NEW HORIZONS FOR NEW VOICES

6:30-7:50 PM  NOPASSPORT PRESS BOOK LAUNCH

Moderated by RANDY GENER & OTIS RAMSEY-ZOE

With MIGDALIA CRUZ, OCTAVIO SOLIS, KAREN HARTMAN, CHIORI MIYAGAWA, SAVIANA STANESCU and ALBERTO SANDOVAL, PRISCILLA PAGE, JOHN EISNER, JEAN RANDICH, SHARON FRIEDMAN,

NoPassport Press presents excerpts from new work (read by authors) and a conversation about the global voice in the age of globalization with five writers who have newly available plays, along with scholars and theatre-makers who've written about their work.

 

FEBRUARY 27, 2010 PANELS: 

11:00 AM: “Utopia/Dystopia & The Global South: The Networked Self in Performance"

With CARIDAD SVICH (playwright & founder, NoPassport)

a reflection on inscription, virtual spaces, the wired self and writing about and for the Global South. 

CARIDAD SVICH is an award-winning playwright, translator and lyricist. Her adaptation of Allende's The House of the Spirits premiered February 2009 at Repertorio Espanol in NY. She is alumna playwright of New Dramatists, founder of NoPassport, associate editor of Contemporary Theatre Review (Routledge/UK), and contributing editor of TheatreForum. Visit her at www.caridadsvich.com

11:30-12:50 AM THEATRE-MAKING AS AN ACT OF UTOPIA-MAKING: 50/50 in 2020

Jenny Greeman and Melody Brooks (New Perspectives), Susan Jonas and more TBA

New Perspectives Theatre Company, The League of Professional Theatre Women and 50/50 in 2020 explore what it means to make art in a culture that only values capital. Is the act of creation a radical act? Can theatrical space be viewed as utopian space? The panel will investigate these theoretical questions and move toward practical solutions for reassessing the value of theatre and its makers. In particular, representatives of the newly formed 50/50 in 2020 will share their plan for achieving parity for women artists by 2020.

1:00-2:10 PM IDIOM: Between Art and Theater: Genealogies of Performance

Organized for Idiom by Stephen Squibb, Panelists: TBA

The arrival of widespread interest in performance amongst contemporary artists has not immediately translated into an expanded interdisciplinary interest in that other, classically time-based medium, the theater. Nor has the theater, broadly speaking, seen fit to expand its categories to correspond with the sudden promiscuity of its traditional methodology. What is the nature of this reciprocal ignorance? Is it simply a question of incompatible constituencies? No doubt there is a deep divide in each community’s respective method of production – but are we so determined? This panel aims to examine the recent history of performance as it relates to current patterns of production and dissemination, with special consideration given to the divide between contemporary art and theater.

Idiom is an online publication of urban artistic practice. By allowing emerging artists, writers and arts professionals to report on, review, and otherwise cover overlooked or under-thought aspects of the larger creative community, Idiom offers a local, engaged counterpoint to the prevailing discourse of contemporary art. www.idiommag.com

2:15 PM JEFF McMAHON: COUNTER INDICATIONS

Counter Indications, a collaboration between writer Jeff McMahon and media designer Jacob Pinholster, is a live performance/installation examining forced confessions, the parameters of what is considered "cruel and unusual" treatment, and the role of influence in determining truth.

Jeff McMahon, Assistant Professor in the School of Theatre and Film at Arizona State University, is the recipient of 8 NEA Fellowships in Choreography. His live  works combining live speech and movement with media have been presented since 1980 at P.S. 122, Dance Theater Workshop, The Kitchen, PS 1, LACE, Cleveland Performance Art Fest., Jacob's Pillow, Highways, and numerous other venues in the U.S. and Europe.  He recently completed a writing residency at the Edward F. Albee Foundation. www.jeffmcmahonprojects.net

 

3-4 LUNCH BREAK

 

4-6 PM NEW DRAMATURGIES: ARTS AND/IN THE ACADEMY

Moderated by JEFF JANISHESKI (O'NEILL THEATRE INSTITUTE) and ELEANOR SKIMIN

 Panel: ELAINE AVILA (Playwright, University of New Mexico), KATE WEISS (Canadian Theatre Alliance), CHARLOTTE MEEHAN (Playwright, Wheaton College), LISA SCHLESINGER Playwright, Columbia College Chicago), MATTHEW MAGUIRE (Playwright, Fordham University), LINSEY BOSTWICK (Big Art Group), and more TBA

6-6:30 PM CLOSING 

7:00 PM RECEPTION hosted by the Lark Play Development Center, 939 8^th Avenue.

NoPassport was founded by playwright Caridad Svich in 2003. It is an unincorporated theatre alliance & press devoted to cross-cultural, Pan-American performance, theory, action, advocacy, and publication. Caridad Svich and NoPassport is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of [Caridad Svich & NoPassport] may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. www.caridadsvich.com/NoPassport

The Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance strives to fulfill its mission of projecting the Armenian voice on a world stage through theater and film by offering contests for new writing, play readings and various educational programs. For more information, please see www.armeniandrama.org or www.biancabagatourian.com

The Internationalists is a collective of directors from around the world whose mission is to create a more open, sustainable and interactive global theatrical community.  We foster creative diplomacy in order to build bridges between artists and audiences of all nations.  By developing a global network of artists, we promote the creation of contemporary performance with an emphasis on cross-cultural exchange and collaboration.  www.theinternationalists.org

First Book on "Theatre and Humanism in a World of Violence" Published in Europe

SOFIA, BULGARIA: Randy Gener's Nathan Award-winning essay "See Under: HOMELAND," has been published in a new book, Theatre and Humanism in a World of Violence, an anthology of essays edited by Kalina Stefanova and Ian Herbert. Published in Sofia, Bulgaria, by St. Kliment Ohridski University Press, the book serves as a record of the proceedings of the 2008 World Congress of the International Theatre Critics Association and was financed by the Ministry of Culture of Bulgaria.

Theare and Humanism in a World of Violence is the first attempt in a book-length form to answer such hot-button questions as: "What makes violence onstage today so sexy? Until recently, violence for its own sake was the prerogative of B-movies and junk mystery novels. What made theatre follow suit? What is the impact of the theatre of violence on the audience? Doesn't it actually make us conformists? Is there a place for humanism among all the postmodern "ism," including post-human and or meta-human theatre? What is the relationship between violence and the aesthetics of ugliness?"

Gener's scholarly essay address the role of theatre and humanism in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on U.S. stages. This timely and relevant essay tackles how Israeli writers like David Grossman and Ian Hatsor have ceased to directly address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in their plays or fiction, after years of violence, military attacks, bombings and innumerable truces that have frayed Arab sympathy. Meanwhile secular Israelis and some Americans who have tackled the conflict in their writings have been villified. On the other hand, it has been very difficult to grant ordinary Palestinians their humanity on U.S. stages without someone insisting that the words "suicide bomber" and "Hamas" need also be uttered in the same breath.

In addition to the range of critical voices from around the world, Theatre and Humanism in a World of Violence contains the acceptance speech of the second winner of the IATC Thalia Prize, the French critic, director and playwright Jean-Pierre Sarrazac, who can be said to have first identified the notion of a post-dramatic theater. There is also a postscript: a text by Richard Schechner, the distinguihsed American director and theatre scholar, on the notion of the five avant-gardes.

Copes of the book were distributed this past April at the Europe Theatre Prize in Wroclaw, Poland, exactly year after the events it records. To purchase copies at the published price of 60 euroes, please contact Kalina Stefanova at this email link, and she may be able to arrange for her Ministry of Culture to send a copy.

A Dialogue with the Polish Master Krystian Lupa

NEW YORK CITY and WROCLAW, POLAND: In Europe, the Polish stage director Krystian Lupa is considered a theatrical giant. As attested by the 13th Europe Theatre Prize that was bestowed upon him this past April, Lupa is ranked alongside such major world figures as Harold Pinter, Peter Brook, Ariane Mnouchkine and Pina Bausch. A director, stage designer and writer, Lupa has been honored with an Austrian Cross of Merit in 2001 and the French Order of the Fine Arts and Humanities in 2002.

In Poland, Lupa is considered a patriarch. As head of the directing program of the Krakow State Drama School, he has trained generations of actors and directors, notably Grzegorz Jarzyna (TR Warszawa), Krzysztof Warlikowski (Krum at Brooklyn Academy of Music) and Piotr Cieplak, all of whom are Lupa disciples. So strong is Lupa’s influence that these latter directors actually create works that either run counter to his vision or consciously move in completely new directions. There is a strong argument to be made that Lupa, not the late Polish director Jerzy Grotowski, is the true shadow that looms behind today’s Polish directing scene, since for many younger directors Grotowski is a figure of myth and legend whose 1960s experimental work they have probably not witnessed firsthand.

In the United States, unfortunately, Lupa is a complete unknown. Unlike Grotowski, whose roots in the U.S. remain deep and profound and whose legacy is being remembered on both sides of the Atlantic with the Grotowski Year 2009 celebrations, Lupa has yet to find his audience. That situation may change after Lupa’s signature production—the Krakow ensemble Narodowy Stary Teatr’s much-praised 1992 production of Thomas Bernhard’s Kalkwerk (The Lime Works)—makes its U.S. premiere from July 14 to 18, as part of the Lincoln Center Festival 2009.

The key word to note in that previous sentence is “may.” It is possible that Lupa’s recognizability factor might increase as a result of this Lincoln Center outing. It is conceivable that his Central European aesthetic might penetrate the Western-leaning blockbuster mentality of America’s current international scene. Among close observers and lovers of world theater, Lincoln Center Festival 2009 will be remembered not only for the great artistry displayed by Ariane Mnouchkine and her company Le Théâtre du Soleil’s Les Éphémères, but also for boldly sticking its neck out on such a risky proposition as Lupa. Thanks to the support of the Polish Cultural Institute, Kalkwerk. marks Lincoln Center Festival’s first foray into the Polish theater. But will this Polish production be another one-off at this summer festival, similar to, say, the great Romanian director Silviu Purcarete’s one-time-only-U.S.-appearance in the summer of 1997 (never to be seen since)?

Believe it or not, the answer to that question goes beyond the ability of our U.S. theater reviewers to fully come to grips with Lupa’s work. Although it would be a positive sign if Kalkwerk actually receives positive critical notices, the probable truth is that American audiences in general would have to learn how to embrace the challenges and complexities of this Polish master’s layered, interpretive creations. Given their cultural specificity and their philosophical dimensions, those challenges can be considerable, since Lupa is nothing if not obsessed with exploring the problems and myths associated with human spiritual development.

Consider this: Kalkwerk. is a four-hour stage adaptation of Das Kalkwekbrings, a dense, difficult 1970 Austrian novel by Bernhard. It is a complex surrealist work about a homebound scientist in an abandoned lime works who compulsively invites his own ruin. Kalkwerk belongs to what can only be described as Lupa’s classical period. In the mid-1980s, Lupa put on plays based on available texts. He frequently adapted great Austrian, German and Russian literature works by Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Musil and Fyodor Dostoyevsky for the small stage (Scena Kameralna) of the Stary Teatr in Krakow. In 1995–1998, Lupa produced an adaptation of Broch’s The Sleepwalkers. Recently, however, Lupa has turned his attention to pop-culture figures and self-mythologizing figures, frequently creating performances based on hundreds of hours of videotapes of actors doing improvisational experiments.

If that description already seems too unapproachable, Kalkwerk retains and pursues the imperceptible mutabilities of Lupa’s brand of immersive art-theatre. Fascinated by the Polish avant-garde artist Witkacy and the psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s writings on psychoanalysis, Lupa asks us to submit to slowness and subtlety—not stretched-out slowness á là Robert Wilson, but sluggish plotting, extended time, immersion and digressive unfolding. This quality of heightened focus could prove to be too much for our fast-paced, gratify-me-now, ADD culture.

In the Polish city of Wroclaw, where Lupa formally received the Europe Theatre Prize, I had the opportunity to see his current productions and works-in-progress. Factory 2 was an eight-hour dramatization of the oft-told story of American Pop icon Andy Warhol and his Factory acolytes, as fantasized by Lupa and his actors. Lupa was also present during an open-rehearsal presentation, clocking in at three hours, of the Marilyn Monroe section of a planned nine-hour triptych, Persona, that will also meditate on the figures of the mystic G.I. Gurdjieff and the philosopher Simone Weil.

Since Lupa and Grotowski belong to the same theatrical culture, there is a strong symbolic sense in both Wroclaw and in the Lincoln Center Festival that Lupa might be taking over the mantle that Grotowski left behind. Although the distinguished Polish theater critic and translator Malgorzata Semil insists that “Lupa is Lupa is Lupa is Lupa, with or without Grotowski (he has earned his position on his own),” there is an argument to be made that Lupa is indirectly indebted to Grotowski, whose anniversary-year celebration has made it possible for a great deal of contemporary Polish theater work to be exported abroad.

And yet Lupa does not consider himself a disciple of Grotowski. Like many contemorary Polish directors, Lupa consciously distances himself from the physical and vocal pyrotechnics developed by Grotowski and his disciplines—so much so that in a published interview, Lupa goes so far as to call Grotowski a fake and a sham. It was a charge that caused some consternation among several Polish actors who knew Grotowski and had worked with him closely.

As my interview with Lupa below shows (conducted with a Polish translator), Lupa is deeply aware that many gurus are emperors with no clothes—that often actors blindly follow a great artist by simple virtue of their charisma. In his most recent works, particularly Factory 2 and Persona, Lupa seeks to expose the irony of the phenomenon of personality, and he doesn’t mind besmirching the sacred idols to prove his point.

RANDY GENER: Mr. Lupa, in the past, you have shown a very strong and special interest in adapting the works of such Austrian writers as Rilke, Musil, Broch and Bernhard. What did you aim for Polish audiences to understand or learn by creating works based on Austrian literary works?

KRYSTIAN LUPA: Austrian writers of the first half of the 20th century, including Bernhard—he was an uncompromising and critical continuator of their tradition—mapped out a literary path for extreme penetration of phenomena within the human personality. They discovered personality not as a formula for the man’s character but as an unpredictable and mysterious process. An attempt to carry out this process through the theatre (in particular through the actor) was for me an opportunity to expand the potential of the theatrical language, and, at the same time, it was a testing ground for the theatre and the audience, for new topics of contemporary reality, in which the existing language and the way the man has been seen so far are no longer true.

GENER: Kalkwerk is a 1992 production that is only now premiering in the U.S. What do you hope American audiences today will understand or learn through seeing this production?

LUPA: First of all, I hope they will meet and appreciate Thomas Bernhard. I think the reason this author has not been very successful in American theaters yet is that this literature is treated too formally—in conventional terms of literary avant-garde. Let me quote [the German writer] Ingeborg Bachmann’s brilliantly insightful comment on Bernhard: “Thomas Bernhard is not a new literary style; it is a totally new genre in human thinking.” Not until the director and subsequently the viewer understand that, may they get infected by the author. And that is a kind of illumination.

GENER: Why is it that your Polish productions are only now being presented in the U.S.? With the exception of your directing a Chekhov play at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., have you ever tried to break into the U.S. theater market before?

LUPA: Well, perhaps a good idea would be to ask somebody in the U.S.? As far as I am concerned, I have never tried to break into any market. I was always absorbed by the place (the esemble and the audience) where I was working at the moment.

GENER: Recently in Wroclaw, I saw the Marilyn Monroe section of your three-part production of Persona. What other explorations do you wish to do? How are the sections about Gurdjieff and Simone Weil connected to the Monroe section?

LUPA: In Wroclaw, Marilyn was a work in progress. It was at the final phase of the actor’s process but still before the final editing of the staging and technical elements. In that part of the triptych, a view of personality as a reservoir of desires and potentials (rather than the actual condition and achievements of an individual) is combined with an object of self-mythologization and hypocrisies on the way to fulfillment. It is also a magic area of interpenetration by other personalities that cuts into and works secretly inside a self as role models. It also tackles transgression, the man’s eternal desire to step beyond his own personality, which he perceives to be a prison.

GENER: Based on what I observed and learned, you seem to be exploring new paths as a director, in which you are exploring the figure of celebrity artists like Warhol and Monroe, and the critics observe that these latest pieces of your are really self-portraits. Do you agree? Why or why not?

LUPA: Self-portraits? Mine or of the actors that identify with the characters they play? This [assessment] might be true in the sense that we follow the path (method) of identification. Working for a long time on the latest two productions, I and the actors lived a kind of parasitic life within the bodies and souls of our characters. This is an extreme experience. In the course of doing it, both sides changed: the artists and the characters subjected to that experiment. It is rather an attempt to take a personal trip inside another man to see what and how happens in there. This is a very intimate process that heads in a direction opposite to giving a character the actor’s own features.

GENER: In a published interview for a Warsaw publication, you called Grotowski “a fake.” What did you mean by this remark? In Wroclaw, there were other Polish actors present at the symposia who disagreed with you about Grotowski—how can you explain their disagreement? In what way was Grotowski “a fake”?

LUPA: This is another motif discussed in Persona (section about Gurdjieff). I was talking about what many spiritual masters do all too eagerly—believing in their unique road to initiation, too easily considering themselves spiritual masters in relation to their partners in the creative process. Jung calls it an unlawful (usurper) use of the power of a “great magician.” I treat my opinion of Grotowski as something very personal and subjective, no wonder some may disagree.

GENER: Would it be fair to describe your directing as “hyper realistic” and “immersive”? Why do your productions seem to be wedded to reality and text, while many other Polish directors seem to prefer abstraction and/or highly physicalized language?

LUPA: I can only suggest that I treat my performances as autonomous realities. They seek to live and not to imitate life. In order to live they need to have life mechanisms installed in them. But this is not an issue of the significance of the text. Human monologue (especially internal monologue) and dialogue are invaluable access paths to the man, who is ritually incarnated in the theatre. But they are not the only ones...

GENER: Now that you have won the Europe Theatre Prize as a major theater artist, what do you hope to create or explore artistically in the next five years?

LUPA: I would not like this prize (or any other one) to have any effect on how new subjects come up or evolve. By the way, this is a mystery even for myself. To a large extent, it happens by itself; my role is only that of a medium or carefully alert intuition. More motifs emerge as I walk my road, and the experience of the road owns them. They surface or are found, or they appear as still unattained. And they form an area of less and less free choice.

TUESDAY, JULY 14 - SATURDAY, JULY 18

Lincoln Center Festival at Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College, 899 10th Avenue (btw. 58th & 59th Streets), New York, NY 10019

Tickets: from $35; online, tel.212.721.6500, Festival Box Office: Avery Fisher Hall (Broadway at 65th Street) @ 7:00 PM

***Special thanks to Kinga Glowacka to the translation from Polish to English.

Randy Gener Wins the Prestigious Nathan Award

“It is my object and desire to encourage and assist in developing the art of drama criticism and the stimulation of intelligent playgoing." --- George Jean Nathan


NEW YORK CITY – The heads of the English departments of Cornell, Princeton, and Yale Universities have chosen Randy Gener, Senior Editor of American Theatre magazine, to receive the annual George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. The honor is reserved for “the American who has written the best piece of drama criticism during the theatrical year (July 1 to June 30), whether it is an article, an essay, treatise or book."

The Awards Committee citation for Gener reads, “He has used that venue [American Theatre Magazine] and others to draw our attention to largely ignored voices and visions on the international theatrical scene, to the work of Filipino-American playwright Jessica Hagedorn, to a small but lively Tennessee Williams Festival in Provincetown, and to the future of theatrical criticism itself in essays that wed critical intelligence with a beat reporter’s love of the telling and unruly fact.”

The citation continues, “In one piece, Gener argues that, at its best, criticism is ‘a cultural asset, one of the bases on which democracy and community are built.’ He fulfills that lofty goal by implicitly reminding us of how much that is excellent in theater here and abroad is ignored by a critical fraternity which, during this age of globalization, seems more parochial than ever.”

Jim O’Quinn, editor in chief of American Theatre Magazine, remarked, “Randy Gener's selection by the Nathan Committee marks the first time that the award has gone specifically for writing in American Theatre magazine, and we’re particularly proud of that.”

O'Quinn continues, "Randy Gener has been a tremendous asset to American Theatre ever since he was selected as a Jerome Foundation Affiliated Writer back in 1995–96, and especially since he joined the staff full-time in 2002. His command of any number of theatrical subjects—from international exchange to the vagaries of arts journalism and criticism—is unequalled among his contemporaries.”

Winning the Nathan Award is the most recent accolade in Gener’s distinguished career. In addition to being the Senior Editor of American Theatre, he is a writer, critic, editor, playwright, and visual artist based in New York City. He is the author of the plays Love Seats for Virginia Woolf and What Remains of a Rembrandt Torn into Four Pieces, among other plays, as well as scholarly essays, articles and reviews in The Village Voice, The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Star Ledger, Time Out New York, and other publications.

Additionally, he has worked as an editor of the Arts Institute/Theatre Institute of the Czech Republic’s newspaper Prague Quadrennial Today and as a freelance dramaturg for the Joseph Papp Public Theater, Roundabout Theatre Company, Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, and Denver Center Theatre Company. His floral installation In the Garden of One World (a collaboration with the Romanian scenic designer Nic Ularu) debuted in 2008 at La MaMa La Galleria.

He has been the recipient of a 1995-96 Jerome Foundation American Theatre/Affiliated Writers Program fellowship, a 2003 New York Times critic fellowship at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Critics Institute; grants from the Foundation of the American Theatre Critics Association, the Ford Foundation, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding; and a Filipinas Magazine Arts and Culture Prize. A member of the theater alliances NoPassport and Theater Without Borders, he was inducted in 2008 to Via Times of Chicago’s Filipino American Hall of Fame.

The Nathan Award is considered the highest accolade in the U.S. for dramatic criticism. When George Jean Nathan provided for it in his will, he explained that it was his “object and desire to encourage and assist in developing the art of drama criticism and the stimulation of intelligent playgoing."

The prize for the Nathan Award consists of the annual net income of half of Mr. Nathan's estate. The annual award now amounts to $10,000, making it the richest as well as one of the most distinguished in the American theater. In addition, the winner receives a trophy symbolic of the award. Ellis Hanson, Chair of the Cornell English Department, will present the award to Gener at a March 9 celebration at the Kalayaan Hall (Freedom Hall) of the Philippine Center near Rockefeller Center in New York City.

Past recipients of the Nathan Award have included Harold Clurman, Walter Kerr, Stanley Kauffmann, Jan Kott, Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Brustein, Eliot Norton, Eric Bentley, Michael Feingold, Alisa Solomon, Daniel Mendelsohn, John Lahr, Hilton Als, Ben Brantley and Charles Isherwood. For a complete description of the Nathan award and its origins, visit http://www.arts.cornell.edu/english/awards/nathan/.