Category: IPSY Events

There Are Still So Many Things Left to Say (1997) a film by Omar Amiralay

by del46

Thursday, March 28, 2013   |  8 PM

Linsly-Chittenden Hall  |  Room 101  |  Open to the public

There Are Still So Many Things Left to Say

OMAR AMIRALAY, 1997

SYRIA | ARABIC WITH SUBTITLES | 49 MINUTES

The film was based on an interview with the late dramatist Saadallah Wannous a few months before he died of cancer. Wannous narrates his somber and relentless reflections – an adieu to a generation for whom the Arab-Israeli conflict has been the source of all disillusion. The playwright recounts, with some regret for the lost opportunities that resulted, how the Palestinian struggle became a central part of intellectual life for an entire generation.

Followed by a discussion with Mohammad Al Attar, Dalia Basiouny, and Eyad Houssami with Ronald Gregg.

Doomed by Hope Theatre Series: March 27-30, 2013

by del46

Doomed by Hope Theatre Series

March 27-30, 2013

 

ABOUT THE THEATRE SERIES

The nonprofit theatre organization Masrah Ensemble (Lebanon) is organizing an international series of events and activities featuring leading playwrights, directors, cultural administrators, and scholars from the Middle East and the United States, whose work is featured in Doomed by Hope: Essays on Arab Theatre. The series of events will include conversations about the ideas at the core of the artists’ work; readings from their plays; lecture performances; workshops for theatre students; and screenings of films and documentaries.

 

ABOUT Doomed by Hope

Doomed by Hope: Essays on Arab Theatre

Edited by Eyad Houssami with a foreword by Elias Khoury Pluto Press, 2012 (English) – Dar Al Adab, 2012 (Arabic)

 

In this unprecedented collection featuring original photography, vanguards of the stage reflect on the legacy of the late Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous, whose monumental plays incited audiences to rise up against tyranny decades ago. Doomed by Hope is a collection of fourteen essays in which playwrights, directors, and scholars capture the zeitgeist of Arab theatre as revolts unfurl across the Middle East. The book maneuvers from intimate memoir to incisive analysis of dramatic literature. From the bowels of Lebanon’s most notorious prison to the drama school of Damascus to the theatres of Cairo and Sanaa, Arab theatre artists are propelling the collective imagination of this pivotal historical moment.

 

 

Program of Events

Thursday, March 28, 2013

9:45 AM  |  Classroom Workshop  | Open to all Theatre Studies students

 

Dalia Basiouny and Margaret Litvin will be guest speakers in Dominika Laster’s Performance Studies seminar.  Basiouny will  perform extracts from Tahrir Stories.  Litvin will share her response and present on the “instant memorialization” of the revolts in Arab performing arts. For the first time, the theatre practitioner and author ofTahrir Stories will be able to discuss the political and social factors that have shaped her work on the stage with theatre scholar Margaret Litvin. Eyad Houssami and Dominika Laster will moderate the session.  To register contact Dominika Laster at dominika.laster@yale.edu

 

4 PM  | Master’s Tea at Pierson College  | Open to all Theatre Studies students

Doomed by Hope: Theatre in Beirut, Damascus, and Cairo Today 

by Eyad Houssami with Dalia Basiouny and Mohammad Al Attar

 

In a world of screens and speeds so great, theatres are padlocked and threatened with demolition. Live public dialogue, as a literary and artistic practice, remains a luxury – if not an impossible cultural phenomenon – in the Arab Middle East. Decades of invasion, occupation, and internecine conflict have ruptured the intangible and tangible infrastructure requisite for theatre. And yet, despite the stifling forces of dictatorship and colonialism, theatre endures. In this talk, Houssami narrates the emergence of alternative infrastructures of and for theatrical artistry in such difficult contexts and discusses the opportunities and challenges of establishing an international, multilingual theatre company based in Beirut, Lebanon. The interactive presentation incorporates video, excerpts of performances and plays, and extracts from Doomed by Hope: Essays on Arab Theatre to share a story about contemporary theatre today.

 

8 PM  |  Film screening |  Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Room 101  | Open to the public

There Are Still So Many Things Left to Say

OMAR AMIRALAY, 1997

SYRIA | ARABIC WITH SUBTITLES | 49 MINUTES

The film was based on an interview with the late dramatist Saadallah Wannous a few months before he died of cancer. Wannous narrates his somber and relentless reflections – an adieu to a generation for whom the Arab-Israeli conflict has been the source of all disillusion. The playwright recounts, with some regret for the lost opportunities that resulted, how the Palestinian struggle became a central part of intellectual life for an entire generation.

 

Followed by a discussion with Mohammad Al Attar, Dalia Basiouny, and Eyad Houssami with Ronald Gregg.

 

Friday, March 29, 2013 | 4 PM 

Yale Drama Coalition (YDC) Theatre Workshop:  The Personal Revolution 

Dalia Basiouny (with Eyad Houssami and Mohammad Al Attar)  — Open to all Yale students.  Advance registration required.  For more information, please contact Kate Heaney: katherine.heaney@yale.edu

***

PARTICIPANTS

DALIA BASIOUNY

Basiouny is a writer, theatre director, translator, and university professor in Egypt. She has directed 18 plays in Egypt, United Kingdom, and the United States, and her plays have been performed in Morocco, Iraq, Zimbabwe, and Germany. She is a contributor to Doomed by Hope.

MOHAMMAD AL ATTAR

Playwright and dramaturg, Al Attar is a graduate of the Faculty of English Literature – Damascus University and the Faculty of Theatre Studies – High Institute of Dramatic Arts. He received his MA degree in Applied Drama from Goldsmiths College. In 2006, Al Attar joined the Studio Theatre Company in Damascus, participating in projects in rural and impoverished areas as well as in a juvenile institute. His play Withdrawal has been adapted for stages in London, New York, New Delhi, Berlin, Tunisia, and Beirut. His play Online premiered at Royal Court Theatre. Could You Please Look into the Camera? premiered at the National Theatre of Scotland’s Traverse Theatre, and his recent short play “A Chance Encounter” debuted with Theatre Uncut 2012 at the Young Vic.

MARGARET LITVIN

Margaret Litvin is assistant professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at Boston University and the author of Hamlet’s Arab Journey: Shakespeare’s Prince and Nasser’s Ghost (Princeton, 2011). Her current research (working title Another East: Arab Writers, Moscow Dreams) explores Russian-Arab and Soviet Arab literary and cultural ties, tracing their effects on Arabic cultural production. She also writes about contemporary Arab drama and intercultural theatre.

EYAD HOUSSAMI

Houssami makes and writes about theatre. He is the founding director of Masrah Ensemble and the editor of the English and Arabic editions of Doomed by Hope: Essays on Arab Theatre. He has performed in dead Byzantine cities in Syria; produced a monodrama in a 13th century mansion only to be shut down by the government; and his play Mama Butterfly received a staged reading at the Between the Seas Festival (New York 2010). A recipient of Rotary and Fulbright grants, he also co-founded and served as President of the Yale Arab Alumni Association.

PERFORMANCES AND PLAYS TO READ FROM

Mama Butterfly

by Eyad Houssami

How do war and diaspora fragment the meaning of family and reshape the experience of loneliness? In Mama Butterfly, a lonely widow conjures up ghosts of her past, holding her family together in the face of the centrifuge of history. It is he story of a woman, from French-occupied Damascus, who falls in love with a man from Beirut and adopts the city as her own.  Globalization, war, and occupation dismember her city and launch her and her family into a state of

migration. Bereaved of her husband, going blind, and left with two children in the Gulf and no family in Beirut, she withstands the pressure to leave and, instead, chooses a life of fixed solitude in Beirut, the city she calls home. In so doing, she and the city together become the axis of family.  The text, originally authored in Arabic and French, is based on a series of interviews conducted in Beirut in 2007. The performance runs 50 minutes. Although the inaugural production was shut down by the Syrian government, the play enjoyed a reading in Between the Seas Festival (New York, 2010).

 

Solitaire

by Dalia Basiouny

Solitaire is a play by Egyptian writer and director Dalia Basiouny. This production is a multi-media performance that connects the events of September 11th in the United States to the Egyptian Revolution, highlighting them as two main catalysts in the change the world is experiencing in the 21st Century.  It opened in Cairo March 2011 and was presented in Iraq in April and Morocco in June. It toured the US in summer 2011.

 

Tahrir Stories

by Dalia Basiouny

 

Tahrir Stories was among the first performances to document the Egyptian revolution through testimonies of the demonstrators and to honor those who fell during the revolution.

 

FACULTY SPONSORS

Sarab Al Ani, Arabic Lector, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations and Council on Middle East Studies

Dominika Laster, Postdoctoral Associate, Lecturer, Theatre Studies

Joseph Roach, Sterling Professor of Theater and English, Theatre Studies

 

PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS

Council on Middle East Studies, Frank Griffel

Interdisciplinary Performance Studies at Yale, Joseph Roach

Arab Students Association, Hana Muasher

Yale Drama Coalition, Katherine Heaney

Film Studies Program, Ronald Gregg

Pierson College, Harvey Goldblatt and Susan M. Anderson

 

February 5 – Discussion of the film: John Frum: He Will Come

by del46

During World War II, America arrived for the first time in Vanuatu and impressed the natives with their advanced technology and generous gifts of cargo. Instead of threatening them or forcing religious ideologies upon them, American soldiers treated the Tannese with dignity and respect and donated medical supplies, food, clothes, and other necessities. In addition, the Tannese were amazed to see black officers among the ranks of soldiers.

America became their beacon of hope against the European occupiers and a resistance movement that had begun before the war assumed religious dimensions that now included America. A mysterious deity named John Frum emerged who embodied these sentiments. After the war, the United States left and the John Frum spirit also departed. A prophecy arose that John Frum would return to Tanna with an abundance of American goods and lead them to salvation from the Christian missionaries. Believers were thrown into prison by the British and French for blasphemy until they were granted religious freedom in 1957. The John Frum followers patiently wait for their American savior to return.

Upon discovering the existence of the John Frum Movement, Cevin Soling, a Harvard graduate student and filmmaker, traveled to Tanna with an abundance of American goods in the hopes of fulfilling the John Frum prophecy. “John Frum, He Will Come” chronicles Mr. Soling’s attempt at becoming an island god.

Bios:

David E. Guinan is a writer, producer, and director who works in the world of converging media. He studied artistic applications of emerging technologies and comparative literature at the University of Wisconsin, as well as the Sorbonne.  In 1998, he joined MTV Networks to develop and produce original multimedia programming.  He went out on his own in 2001 and began an intense exploration of more experimental types of filmmaking. David produced and directed John Frum, He Will Come a feature length documentary about cargo cults that worship America on the island of Tanna in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu.  John Frum, He Will Come had its world premiere and headlined the 20th annual Hot Springs Documentary Festival.  He also produced Freeloader, a narrative feature that premiered opening weekend at Rooftop Films and was featured in the New York Times, Time Out, and New York 1. He also continued his collaboration with artist Liz Magic Laser producing Flight and I Feel Your Pain, both of which received glowing reviews in the New York Times, Art Forum, Modern Painter, and New York Magazine.  He continues to work with other notable artist including Frances Stark, Michelle Abeles, Simone Leigh, and Ryan McNamara.

Cevin Soling  is a writer, director, producer, artist, and academic.  He produced and directed The War on Kids, which illustrates how American public schools are now modeled after prisons and why they cannot be reformed.  The film was honored as the best educational documentary at the New York Independent Film and Video Festival and received accolades from The New York Times, Variety, and The Huffington Post.   Soling has been a guest on numerous radio shows including “The Lionel Show” (Air America), “The Joey Reynolds Show” (WOR), and “The Leonard Lopate Show” (WNYC).  Additionally, he has appeared on national television on the RT network, “The Dr. Nancy Show” (MSNBC), and as a featured guest on “The Colbert Report.”  Soling is currently enrolled in graduate school at Harvard University.

Film Screenings and Dialogue with Polish Laboratory Theatre Actors

by del46
Thursday, November 8, 2012 – 7:00 PM 
FILM: AKROPOLIS 
One of Jerzy Grotowski’s major theatrical productions, Akropolis transports the action of Wyspiański’s drama from Wawel Hill to Auschwitz.
 
Followed by a discussion with the actors moderated by Marc Robinson (Professor of English and Theatre Studies)
 
Friday, November 9, 2012 – 7:00 PM
FILM: THE CONSTANT PRINCE
Based on Calderón de la Barca’s play, The Constant Prince features Ryszard Cieślak in the role that came to be known as the embodiment of Grotowski’s notion of the ‘holy actor.’
 
Followed by a discussion with the actors moderated by Paige McGinley (Assistant Professor of Theater Studies, American Studies, and African American Studies)
 
DAVENPORT AUDITORIUM,  248 York Street, New Haven
Events are Free but seating is limited
RSVP here
 
Saturday, November 10, 2012 – 10AM – 2 PM
Workshop with Mieczysław Janowski and Andrzej Paluchiewicz, Actors of the Polish Laboratory Theatre
220 York Street, Ballroom  — Email Dominika Laster for more information:  dominika.laster@yale.edu
 

Mieczysław Janowski worked in the Laboratory Theatre for eight years, playing in the theatre’s core productions, including Faust, Akropolis, and The Constant Prince.  After the Laboratory Theatre’s dissolution in 1984, Janowski continued acting in the Dramatic Theatre in Wałbrzych and the Wspołczesny Theatre in Wrocław.  Janowski’s acting was not limited to the theatre; from 1962 to 1986 he appeared in over 85 feature films.  In 1999, the President of Poland awarded Janowski with the Golden Order of Merit for his entire artistic oeuvre.

Andrzej Paluchiewicz worked with Jerzy Grotowski from 1966 to 1976.  He was an actor in the Laboratory Theatre and took part in the paratheatrical activities, which followed the Theatre of Productions phase.  Paluchiewicz was also the ensemble’s resident photographer. He is the author of some of the most iconic images of Grotowski’s productions.

 

This program is presented by Interdisciplinary Performance Studies at Yale (IPSY) and the Theatre Studies program at Yale University. The events are part of the Poland-U.S. Campus Arts Project, a program of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw, Poland.


 

 

by del46

 Interdisciplinary Performance Studies at Yale (IPSY) presents

WORKCENTER YALE RESIDENCY

February 20 – March 3, 2013

 This February, IPSY brings to New Haven the Open Program of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards for a series of lively and wide-ranging events.  The program will feature performances, public meetings and a symposium exploring the poetics of encounter.  IPSY is partnering with the Eli Whitney Museum, InterCambio, Sound Hall, the People’s Arts Collective of New Haven, as well as local artists and activists, to create dialogue and exchange between diverse New Haven communities.

Open Program is directed by Mario Biagini, Associate Director of the Workcenter and longtime Grotowski collaborator.  Through performance, members of the Open Program —10 actors from around the world— investigate the moment of meaningful contact between individuals and the poetic word as a tool for human contact and action.  Currently, their performances take as their source material the complexity and richness of Allen Ginsberg’s poetry as well as traditional African American songs and shouts from the Southern United States to highlight the distinct relation between song and the poetic word.

February 22 & 23, 2013 – 8:00 PM

ELECTRIC PARTY SONGS  (Cabaret-style performance)

Calhoun Cabaret, 189 Elm Street, New Haven, CT 06511

 

February 28 & March 1, 2013 – 8:00 PM

I AM AMERICA (Performance) – with set built by children at the Eli Whitney Museum

Whitney Theater, 53 Wall Street, New Haven, CT 06511

March 2, 2013  –  11 AM – 4 PM

SYMPOSIUM:  POETRY AS A PRACTICE OF ENCOUNTER

Whitney Theater, 53 Wall Street, New Haven, CT 06511

March 3, 2013  –  4 PM

ELECTRIC PARTY SONGS (An experiment in the potentialities of a party as an art form)

BAR, 254 Crown Street, New Haven, CT 06511                   Special guest DJ:  Dave Coon

Events are free and open to the public.  Seating is limited.  RSVP here.

ELECTRIC PARTY SONGS, created by the Workcenter’s Open Program under the direction of Mario Biagini, is a flow of songs and actions based on the poetry Allen Ginsberg.  Members of this international group elaborated and composed all of the songs, approaching the meanings, rhythms and sounds of the spoken texts as the seeds of musical and dramatic creation. Their varied backgrounds generate a stylistically diverse body of music, drawing inspiration from blues, rock, pop, punk and traditional sources. The team weaves into Electric Party Songs its investigation of traditional songs from the Southern United States.

I AM AMERICA brings the poetry of Allen Ginsberg to life in a performance with language culled from Ginsberg’s poetry as well as calls, shouts and traditional songs from the U.S. South.  Original compositions by members of the Workcenter’s Open Program, developed in intensive collaboration over a period of three years, are placed in dialogue with these sources. The performance unfolds around fragments of Ginsberg’s poem America.

Grotowski + Performance Research is a yearlong program pivoting around the work of Jerzy Grotowski, one of the most influential theatre directors of the 20th century.  The program is presented by Interdisciplinary Performance Studies at Yale (IPSY) and the Theatre Studies program at Yale University. The events are part of the Poland-U.S. Campus Arts Project, a program of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw, Poland, and supported by the Polish Cultural Institute New York.

***

Grotowski and the Workcenter Course

Theater Studies | Fall 2012/Spring 2013 | THST424/THST425

This yearlong course offers students a unique opportunity to gain historical, theoretical and practical insight into the work of Jerzy Grotowski, one of the most important and influential theatre directors of the 20th century. The fall semester will be devoted to a substantial historical and theoretical examination of Grotowski’s work.  In addition to an in-depth study of key texts, students will have an opportunity to see rare archival film documentation from various phases of Grotowski’s research.

The spring semester will function as a laboratory of performance research in which students will conduct practical research examining several lines of inquiry, such as embodied memory and its transmission, vigilance, and Grotowski’s notion of verticality – among others.  This investigation will integrate theoretical discussions and embodied research. Under the direction of Thomas Richards and Mario Biagini, Grotowski’s designated heirs, students will work on ancient African and Afro-Haitian songs of tradition and elements of the physical training developed at the Workcenter over the past twenty-five years.  While a research agenda will hold primacy in this course, students will also learn essential elements of the acting craft such as: the relation of precision to ogranicity; body resonators and spatial resonance; awareness of space; resonance of the voice; improvisation within a structure; and developing precise vocal and physical performance scores.

The spring semester will be structured around the residency of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards at Yale University.  Students will be exposed to the current practical work of both Workcenter performance teams.  The lab component of the course will also include five different Workcenter performances, public meetings, symposia, film screenings and work demonstrations.

Jerzy Grotowski revolutionized the way in which Western theatre practitioners conceive of the audience-actor relationship, theatre staging and the craft of acting.  Perhaps best known for his notion of ‘poor theatre,’ Grotowski’s practice extends beyond the confines of conventional theatre assuming a long-term and systematic exploration of the possibilities of the human being in a performative context.  In practical terms, Grotowski’s work explores the ways in which specific performative techniques unlock forgotten potentialities in the human being.  This course will undertake an in-depth exploration and analysis of Grotowski’s work and particularly its last phases, which draw most significantly on the traditional songs and ritual movement of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, and examine the ways in which these performative techniques are deployed as tools in the work on oneself.

Using Grotowski’s performance research and practice as an aperture, students will also investigate diverse textual material from the Christian Gnostic tradition, such as the Gospel of Thomas and “The Hymn of the Pearl,” a poem from the Gnostic Acts of Thomas; the work of 17th Century German mystic Johann Georg Gichtel; the tradition of Kabala; G.I. Gurdjieff; Allen Ginsberg; and the writings of Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz.  Drawing on source materials from ethnomusicology, anthropology, religious and performance studies, students will explore transnational performative practices including Haitian songs and ritual movements, such as the yanvalou; Hindu practices associated with the concept of chakras; and Slavic practices of vigilance.  The course will consider the commonalities and divergences of these diverse texts and embodied practices, propelled forward by an active questioning of the ways in which these textual materials and traditional praxes can be relevant for the individual today.

Meeting days and times:

THST 424 Fall 2012 – Fridays, 1:30-3:20 PM

THST 425 Spring 2013 – Fridays, 12:00-3:00 PM

Students will have additional lab hours during the Workcenter Yale Residency (February and March of 2013).

Course limited to 12 students.

Admission via interview/audition.  Acting experience not required.  Please contact instructor for more information about admission to the course:  dominika.laster@yale.edu

Symposia

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Saturday, March 2nd — Symposium:  Poetry as a Practice of Encounter


11 AM – 1 PM  Workcenter’s Open Program director Mario Biagini in dialogue with New Haven Review Editor Donald Brown

2-4 PM:  Roundtable discussion of Workcenter’s Open Program performances with Associate Dean for the ArtsSusan Cahan, Associate Professor Magda Romańska, Joshua Safran, film director Borys Lankosz, and Mario Biagini.

PSWG – FALL 2012 PROGRAM

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September 11 – Elise Morrison – Performing Citizen Arrest:  Surveillance Art and the Passerby

September 18 –  John Copper – Art / Performance / History

September 25 –  No meeting this week.

October 2 –  Elizabeth Wiet —  Jack Smith, Charles Ludlam, and the Objects of Camp

October 9 – Joseph Clarke – Sound of Architecture

October 16 –  Discussion of Richard Montoya’s American Night: The Ballad of Juan José (Yale Rep)

October 30 –  Cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy

November 6 –  Andrew Hannon — The San Francisco Diggers and Performance and Everyday Life

November 13 –  Lynda Paul — Las Vegas and Virtual Tourism: Sonic Shaping of Simulated Worlds

November 27 –  Discussion of David Adjmi’s Marie Antoinette (Yale Rep)

December 4 – Discussion of Sarah Ruhl’s Dear Elizabeth (Yale Rep)

Electric Party

by del46

March 3, 2013 at 4 PM  – BAR

254 Crown Street, New Haven, CT
RSVP

 

Electric Party is a stream of dramatic elements – songs, rhythm, dance, poetry – that emerge from a seemingly casual atmosphere of a party in which the poetic word intersects with the present circumstances in which we are living. This experiment in the potentialities of a party as a form of art explores the edges of theatrical and social behavior, and plays with the sometimes ambiguous division between the two.  Electric Party is an articulated game that unfolds throughout the night:  songs, poems, dances and actions appear and disappear without resolution, continually playing with the rhythms of the party, riding its waves. While guests eat, socialize, drink and dance, the gathering arrives to moments of high intensity through structured and precise sequences of action performed by the Open Program Team.