No Passport w/ Translation Think Tank presents DREAMING THE AMERICAS: THE BODY POLITIC IN PERFORMANCE at MESTC CUNY

THE GRADUATE CENTER THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

 NoPe – NoPassport ConferenceDREAMING THE AMERICAS / THE BODY POLITIC IN PERFORMANCENoPassport presents a one-day conference with the support of The Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts, Translation Think Tank, and in collaboration with Frank Hentschker and the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.Initiated by Caridad Svich www.caridadsvich.com/NoPassport The conference will focus on a wide range of contemporary works for theatreand performance, viewing the body politic from a variety of formal perspectives.Topics that will be addressed in panels and special presentations include : the myriad articulations of political theatre, the face of theatre and social justice, mending democracy through theatre, dramaturgy affected by new technologies, performing the borderlands in and outside the US, intercultural negotiations in acts of translation, reconfiguring the classics, history, memory and transculturation in new writing. There will also be a book launch event for the release of three volumes from NoPassport Press. NoPassport was founded by playwright Caridad Svich as a Pan-American theatre alliance & press devoted to action, advocacy, and change toward the fosteringof cross-cultural diversity and difference in the arts with an emphasis on theembrace of the hemispheric spirit in US Latina/o and Latin-American theatre-making. Special thanks are given to The Segal Center for facilitating book sales at this event, Robert Jereski for help with coordination of the Plan Mexico panel, and the NoPe Conference Steering Committee: Daniel Banks, Daniel Brunet, Rafael Gallegos, Lanna Joffrey and Christina Marin. Note: Preliminary Schedule–Program is subject to radical change. For detailed information and final schedule please check our website:http://web.gc.cuny.edu/mestcFriday, Feb. 22nd, 07 10:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m. Martin E. Segal Theatre Free.Suggested NoPassport donation at the door: $5.Reservations not required. Seats: First come, first served.Call 1.212.817.8215 or continuinged@gc.cuny.edu. Panels: 10 AM Introduction – “Healing the Body Politic” -Caridad Svich (founder, NoPassport) How can theatre face the world? And what do these faces, in turn, reveal who we are and the human power for spiritual transformation? Caridad Svich is an award-winning playwright, translator and lyricist whose work has been staged across the US and abroad. She is alumna playwright of New Dramatists, founder of NoPassport, contributing editor of TheatreForum, and editor of several books on theatre and performance. Visit her at www.caridadsvich.com 10:15 AM Keynote – “But Does It Work? Thinking About Efficacy in Political Art” – Stephen Duncombe (NYU/Gallatin School)  Many of us believe that culture is valuable tool for political change, but how do we know if it really works?  This talk will open up a discussion on how we might think about the efficacy of political art in such a way that honors creativity yet demands accountability.

Stephen Duncombe teaches the history and politics of media and culture at the Gallatin School Of New York University. He is the author, of among other books, Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in the Age of Fantasy, and the editor of the Cultural Resistance Reader.  11:00 AM Theatre and Social Justice panel -moderated by Catherine Filloux  panel: Erik Ehn, Susana Cook, Amparo Garcia-Crow, Barclay Goldsmith, J.T. Rogers, Betty Shamieh; Featuring a performance excerpt from Killing the Boss currently playing at the Cherry Lane Theatre;  SUSANA COOK is a playwright/performer/director of political theater from Buenos Aires, Argentina living in New York since 1991. Her current work focuses on parallels between the dictatorship in Argentina and the present U.S. administration. creating powerful political satires that use humor as a tool for exposing the rationales used by those in power to justify oppressions against minorities. Erik Ehn is married ot Patricia Chanteloube. He's a playwright, artistic associate at Theater of Yugen (SF), Dean of the School of Theater at the California Institute of the Arts, and a graduate of New Dramatists. Catherine Filloux is an award-winning playwright who has been writing about genocide, human rights, and social justice for the past twenty years. Her plays are published by Playscripts, Inc., Smith & Kraus, Vintage, Dramatic Publishing & Seagull. She is a co-founder of Theatre Without Borders.  

Amparo Garcia-Crow is a playwright, director, actor/singer. She heads the City of Austin's new $16 million dollar Mexican American Cultural Center.

Barclay Goldsmith is Artistic Director of Borderlands Theater in Tucson, Arizona. J.T Rogers’ plays include The Overwhelming and Madagascar. He is resident playwright at New Dramatists and is currently on commission from the Royal National Theatre in London. Betty Shamieh is currently an NEA/TCG playwright-in-residence at Magic Theatre, where her play Territories is running through February 2008. Her recent productions include Roar at the New Group and The Black Eyed at New York Theatre Workshop. 11:45 AM Making Theatre in Mad Times  panel -moderated by Charlotte Meehan  With Elaine Avila, Christine Evans, Elana Greenfield, Ken Prestininzi, Ken Urban  ELAINE AVILA’s plays have been performed across the U.S., Canada, and Europe–including Lieutenant Nun (based on the true story of a woman conquistador), Burn Gloom (a music-theatre collaboration involving writers from 14 cities). Elaine is the Robert Hartung Endowed Chair of Dramatic Writing at the University of New Mexico. 

Christine Evans is an internationally produced playwright now based in the U.S. Ms. Evans teaches playwriting at Harvard.

 ELANA GREENFIELD is the author of At the Damascus Gate: Short Hallucinations (Green Integer, 2003), her play Nine Come is included in New Downtown Now: An Anthology of New Theater from Downtown New York (University of Minnesota Press, 2006). She is the winner of a Whiting Writers' Award, and teaches at The New School's Eugene Lang College, and NYU Tisch Dramatic Writing Program. CHARLOTTE MEEHAN is a resident artist in the RAPT program at Perishable Theatre (Providence, RI) where her multimedia stage work, Sweet Disaster, will premiere in April 2008 under Ken Prestininzi’s direction.  Ms. Meehan is Playwright-in-Residence and Associate Professor of English at Wheaton College. 

KEN Prestininzi is a Resident Artist at Perishable Theatre, Providence, a seasoned

playwright/director/producer and  Associate Artistic Director of the Brown/Trinity Playwrights Repertory Theatre, and teacher of ensemble theatre, directing, dramaturgy and other acts of daring. 

Ken Urban’s plays have been produced and developed by Target Margin, Annex Theatre, Luna Stage, Son of Semele Ensemble, and The Chocolate Factory. His new play The Happy Sad is being produced by The Flea in March 2008. He is the Artistic Director of The Committee in New York and he is currently a Playwriting Fellow at the Huntington Theater in Boston. www.kenurban.org

 12:30-1:00 PM LUNCH 1:30 PM Narrative Connections: Dramaturgy, Design and New Technologies -Presentation and panel moderated Randy Gener With Ping Chong, Kevin Cunningham, Kirby Malone, Jay Scheib and (pending confirmation) Sam Buntrock  Rapid developments in animations, video-game and computer technologies are profoundly affecting the domain of narrative and scenography. This presentation & panel investigates and explores the work of American theatre artists who have been deeply involved in new media.  Randy Gener gives an excerpt from “Storytelling by Digital Design: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create Plays,” a multimedia lecture that was presented at the 2007 Prague Quadrennial for World Scenography with the support of the Ford Foundation, through the Institute of International Education. The talk will be followed by a panel discussion, featuring  Ping Chong (Director and Media Artist); Kevin Cunningham (3-Legged Dog Media and Theater Group); Jay Scheib (Director), Kirby Malone, co-editor of Live Movies: A Field Guide to New Media for the Performing Arts; and pending confirmation: Sam Buntrock, director of Sunday in the Park with George at Studio 54 Randy Gener is a New York city-based writer, playwright and critic. He is the senior editor of American Theatre, a monthly magazine published by Theatre Communications Group (TCG). He has lectured widely on arts and culture in the U.S. and in Europe.  2:30 PM Reconfiguring the classics in new writing panel-moderated by Saviana Stanescu With Matthew Maguire, Chiori Miyagawa, Diane Paulus, Shoshana Polanco, Jay Scheib, Caridad Svich, Anne Washburn Matthew Maguire is a co-artistic director of Creation Production Company and the Director of the Theatre Program at Fordham College at Lincoln Center.  His plays include The Tower, Phaedra, and Abandon.  He is a proud alumnus of New Dramatists.  His awards include an OBIE for Acting and an OBIE for Directing.  www.creationproduction.org Chiori Miyagawa is a playwright and dramaturg based in NYC.  She is a
resident playwright of New Dramatists. Diane Paulus is director of The Donkey Show, which has toured internationally and played an open run Off-Broadway. She is currently on commission from Ambassador Theatre Group in London. Shoshana Polanco has been producing Jay Scheib’s work since 2006. Past productions: Women Dreamt Horses for BAiT – Buenos Aires in Translation at PS 122 and This Place is a Desert at ICA in Boston and Under the Radar, Public Theater, NYC. Upcoming productions: Untitled Mars (this title may change) opening in April at PS 122 and the opera The Making of Americans opening at the Walker Arts Center in December. She has worked for BAM, Lincoln Center, Cervantino Festival, and TeatroStageFest among others.

Saviana Stanescu is a Romanian-born playwright teaching at NYU, TSOA, Drama Department. Her play Waxing West (La MaMa Theatre) won the 2007 New York Innovative Theatre Award for Outstanding Script. She's currently a NYSCA writer-in-residence with Women's Project. CARIDAD SVICH is a playwright who has adapted works by Euripides, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Wedekind, Lope de Vega, Calderon de la Barca, & Federico Garcia Lorca. Anne Washburn is a Brooklyn based playwright. Her plays include Apparition, The Internationalist, The Ladies, The Communist Dracula Pageant, and a sort of translation of Euripides' Orestes. 3:15 PM Translation on Deck: Intercultural Negotiations -moderated by Sarah Cameron Sunde & Marie Louise Miller  with Chantal Bilodeau, Daniel Brunet, Jean Graham-Jones, Peter Meineck, Jerry Ruiz  *(This is a Translation Think Tank session) Chantal Bilodeau is a playwright and translator originally from Montreal. She has translated plays by Koffi Kwahulé (Ivory Coast), Catherine Léger (Quebec) and Jean Cocteau (France), as well as scenes from a play by Pierre Mumbere Mujomba (Congo). Current translations include new plays by Larry Tremblay (Quebec) and Mohamed Kacimi (Algeria).

Daniel Brunet is a director, producer and translator. Based in both Berlin and Brooklyn, he is the Associate Director of German Theater Abroad and has translated nearly a dozen contemporary German plays in the last five years.Jean Graham-Jones is a professor of theatre at CUNY's Graduate Center, where she specializes in Latin American theatre,performance, and theory.Her translations of plays by Argentinean dramatists Ricardo Monti, Daniel Veronese, Federico León, Lola Arias, and Rafael Spregelburd have been published in two book-length collections: Reason Obscured: Nine Plays by Ricardo Monti (2004) and BAiT: Buenos Aires in Translation (2007).  Peter Meineck is Artistic Director of the Aquila Theatre Company and a clinical professor of Classics and Ancient Studies at NYU. He was the winner of the American Translators Association Galantiere Award for his translation of Aeschylus' Oresteia. A volume of his Sophocles translations was recently published by Hackett.

Marie-Louise Miller is a director and dramaturg who has worke
d internationally as well as in and around New York City. She is a proud member of NoPassport, Theater Without Borders, and the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab. She is also the smitten mother of two children.