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Drama Panorama #3 – New Translations of International Drama

New Translations of International Drama

In nine readings from nine countries over three days, Drama Panorama: Forum for Translation and Theater e. V. will present staged readings and panel discussions that showcase the work of theater translators with its particularities and challenges along with new international plays and their cultural contexts.

With this festival of staged readings, Drama Panorama will present theater cultures that are usually underrepresented on German-speaking stages, introduce new plays from Central and Eastern Europe (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Ukraine), Israel, Cuba and Guinea-Bissau, and explore current issues in Portugal and the United Kingdom.

Each reading will provide an introduction to the country’s drama and theater community as well as the work of translation, which often goes beyond language transfer itself, in discussion with international dramatists and other guests.

Staged reading and talks take place every day on May 26, 27 and 28 at 3pm, 5pm and 8pm

You can reserve tickets, find an overview of the schedule and more information about the event at drama-panorama.com

Please note that this event is in German.

Friday,  May 26, 2023

3pm
Hungary: Trapped in the Patriarchy
István Tasnádi: Kartonpapa 
Translated from the Hungarian Marianne Behrmann

5pm
Ukraine: Journey Through a Country Torn Apart
Anastasiia Kosodii: Timetraveller’s Guide to Donbas
Translated from the Ukrainian by Lydia Nagel

8pm
Poland: A Bitter Pandemic Commedia dell’Arte
Ishbel Szatrawska: Totentanz. Schwarze Nacht, schwarzer Tod
Translated from the Polish by Andreas Volk

Saturday, May 27, 2023

3pm
Czech Republic: Out of the System – Shadow Economy Workers
Tomáš Ráliš: Sorex
Translated from the Czech by Maira Neubert

5pm
Israel: At the Boundaries of Humanity – Drama in Times of Catastrophe
Maya Arad Yasur: Triage
Translated from the Hebrew by Matthias Naumann
This talk will be held in English

8pm
United Kingdom: Drama and Climate
Dawn King: Das Tribunal
Translated from the English by Henning Bochert
This talk will be held in English

Sunday, May 28, 2023

3pm
Guinea-Bissau: Decolonising Thinking
Abdulai Sila: Zwei Schüsse und ein Lachen
Translated from the Portuguese by Renate Heß

5pm
Portugal: The Media in the Post-Fact Era
Rui Cardoso Martins: Neueste Nachrichten
Translated from the Portuguese by Niki Graça

8pm
Cuba: Water Rising on all Sides – The Present in the Theatre and on the Streets
Yunior García Aguilera: Jacuzzi
Translated from the Spanish by Miriam Denger

Funded by the Deutscher Übersetzerfonds and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR programme. The translation of the Czech play Sorex by Tomáš Ráliš was funded by the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.

 

Born in East Berlin

30 Jahre Mauerfall / The 30th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

A bilingual staged reading (with corresponding subtitles) of a new play by Rogelio Martinez, off-site at Stasi Headquarters, Campus for Democracy in “Haus 22” (Ruschestraße 103 in 10365 Berlin-Lichtenberg)

In 1988, Bruce Springsteen played a legendary concert in East Germany. 300,000 people showed up, making it the largest concert event in the entire history of the German Democratic Republic.

Born in East Berlin explores the ultimate juxtaposition between the freedom of a rock concert and the captivity of an oppressive government during the time of a great historical and cultural shift. Anne, a spirited road manager from the United States, navigates a labyrinth of Stasi bureaucracy and learns how personal their tactics can be. A sly look at the cost of institutionalized dishonesty and the power of rock and roll.

In cooperation with the Stasi Records Agency

Followed by a post-performance discussion with playwright Rogelio Martinez, director Johanna McKeon and Dagmar Hovestädt (Head of Communications for the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records [BStU]), moderated by Daniel Brunet

HeLa

The Poetic-Scientific Dream-Fate of Henrietta Lacks

a new play by Lauren Gunderson and Geetha Reddy

When Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old African-American mother of five was dying of cancer in a Baltimore hospital in 1951, doctors took samples of her tumor cells and gave the cell line the name HeLa. The HeLa cells were the first ones to stay alive outside the human body and multiply. They became an extremely valuable asset in medical research, generating treatments for polio and numerous other drugs. Millions of dollars were made with Henrietta´s cells. HeLa cells are still used for research in countless labs around the world. Henrietta, however, never gave her consent to have the samples taken and was not even asked. It was not until 1975 that her family learned about the connection between Henrietta and the HeLa cells.

In a kaleidoscope of emotional flashbacks, sweet memories and bitter dreams, HeLa explores the story of Henrietta Lacks’ life and death and her posthumous life. It is a tale of love, togetherness and fate, but also of exploitation, neglect and racism.

“Once again, we see how Black families in the U.S. have served us all, at great cost to themselves.”  Theatrius.com

Informed Consent

A staged reading of a new science play by Deborah Zoe Laufer about identity, representation and the answer to the question of who owns the rights to genetic knowledge.

Jillian, a young geneticist, is thrilled to be able to work with a tribe of Native Americans living in the Grand Canyon. She does tests for the susceptibility to diabetes which is threatening to wipe out the tribe. Her tests reveal no such genetic connection but she does find out other things: for example, that the tribe had originally migrated from Siberia. The tribal council, however, had not given its consent for those additional tests to be conducted: Siberia? The tribe’s origin myth clearly roots them in the Grand Canyon. The council threatens to sue the university if the results are published …

At home, Jillian has to confront her own genetic disposition: She knows that she inherited a gene variant clearly related to Alzheimer’s. Should she do tests on her daughter to find out if she has it, too? Her husband clearly says NO!

Deborah Zoe Laufer: “One of the questions the play asks is, ‘Now that we can know the story of our past and perhaps the story of our future through our genome, well, who are we?’ Are we our stories? Are we our genome? Are we our memories, our tribe, our race? What defines us?” – “A friend sent me the New York Times article about the court case between the Havasupai Native Americans, who live on the floor of the Grand Canyon, and Arizona State University. I learned subsequently that it was a landmark case concerning informed consent, and has changed the laws about what needs to be specified in consent forms for scientific research on human subjects. But what fascinated me at first was the clash of cultures, and the intersection of science and religion. And learning more about the genome, I realized questions of identity are much more complicated than we once thought.“

Deborah Zoe Laufer_picDeborah Zoe Laufer grew up in Liberty, New York. She attended State University of New York at Purchase and Juilliard School in New York City, where she graduated from the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program in 2000, and was also the playwright-in-residence. Her works have been produced at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Portland Stage and eighty other theaters around the country, in Germany, Russia and Canada. Her plays include The Last Schwartz, Fortune, End Days, Out of Streno, Sirens, Leveling Up, Meta, The Three Sisters of Weehawken, The Gulf of Westchester, Miniatures, and Random Acts.
Deborah’s notable awards include the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award in 2009 and a Lilly Award in 2010. She is also a two-time recipient of the LeCompte du Nouy Award from The Lincoln Center Foundation. In 2008, End Days won the American Theatre Critics Association Steinberg citation.

The reading is part of ETB | IPAC’s SCIENCE & THEATRE series.

 

 

 

Salomania

MARK JACKSON is English Theatre Berlin´s Fall 2013 Playwright In Residence.

He will direct a staged reading of his play Salomania.

In 1895, Maud Durrant moved from San Francisco to Berlin, Germany, to study music. Shortly after, her brother killed two girls in the belfry of a church. Their mother told Maud to stay in Europe and change her name, lest the scandal ruin her career. Now going by Maud Allan, she became a major celebrity in Great Britain as a dancer and society personality. In 1918, in the weariest depths of WWI, she was accused by a British MP, Noel Pemberton-Billing, of being a lesbian, sadist, and German sympathizer as evidenced by her having played the title role in a private production of Oscar Wilde’s Salome.

Against the advice of friends in high places, Maud sued Billing for libel. He then used the case as a platform to promote a conspiracy theory involving a secret German book listing the names of 47,000 traitors to England, all held under the thumb of homosexual German agents. While soldiers continued to fight and die in the mud of France, people back home read the latest on the salacious events of the trial. Salomania uses this story as the basis to ask questions about how people deal with anxiety in times of incredible change. How can a society allow itself to be both hysterical and “civilized” at the same time, and expect to function either well, morally, or respectably?

Mark Jackson is a playwright, director, and performer based in San Francisco, USA. He was Artistic Director of Art Street Theatre from 1995 to 2004, during which time he wrote, directed and performed in numerous productions for the company. Mark’s work in the San Francisco area has also been seen at Aurora Theatre Company, Encore Theatre Company, EXIT Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Potrzebie Dance Project, San Francisco International Arts Festival, Shotgun Players, and Z Space, among others. Nationally at The Catamounts (Denver) and The Studio Theatre (Washington D.C.). Internationally at Arts International Festival IV (Japan), Edinburgh Festival Fringe (UK), and Deutsches Theater Berlin (Germany). Mark has been a resident playwright of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, where he was awarded the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Honorary Fellowship, and received a 2005 Bundeskanzler-Stipendium of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Mark has been a company member of The Shotgun Players since 2010.

New Work From New People

New Work From New People is an evening featuring work by writers, actors and directors who are new to English Theatre Berlin and our community that THE LAB presents every six months, in addition to its regular monthly programming.

The August edition includes excerpts from:

The Saint Factory by Lavinia Abbott

Banking: A Ghost Story by Kishore Chakraborty

Satie et Cocteau: A Rehearsal of a Play of a Composer of a Poet by Mike Czuba

Das Traumkabarett by James Harris

Mundo Overloadus by Michael Lederer

 

Ich, KürbisGeist

By Sibyl Kempson

A staged reading introducing our partnership with Performance Space 122

Ich, KürbisGeist is presented with special permission from AO International Talent Agency.

An olde-tyme agricultural vengeance play for Hallowe’en (even though it’s August)! Inspired by Sibyl Kempson’s visit to Austria during Kürbiskernernte (pumpkin seed harvesting season), this piece features a rigorous, specific and completely invented language. Every word is semi-recognizable: an amalgam of English, Swedish, German – and Sid Caesar.

“Much like the words spoken by Shakespeare’s wily fools, the messages are scrambled. Yet the world of Ich, Kürbisgeist is whole, and surprisingly powerful. Sometimes the gut understands better than the brain.”, Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times, November 6, 2012

Sibyl Kempson lives and makes theater plays in NYC and the Pocono Mountains. Her plays have been presented at Dixon Place, Soho Rep, Performance Space 122, The Chocolate Factory, New York Live Arts, the Fusebox Festival in Austin, TX, the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, the Great Plains Theater Conference in Omaha and Theater Bonn in Germany. She earned an MFA in Playwriting from Brooklyn College, 2007.

Isaac’s Eye

By Lucas Hnath
a staged reading from our SCIENCE & THEATRE series

isaacseye_keyvis_eyeonlyYoung Isaac Newton desperately wants to become a member of the club of clubs for scientists, the Royal Society. In order to convince Robert Hooke, the institution’s curator of experiments, he sticks a needle into his tear duct to prove that light is made of particles. Ouch!!! And if science won’t do it there is another way: Hooke keeps a detailed diary of his sex life …

Isaac’s Eye playfully blends the facts of Newton’s life with an equal dose of fiction to explore what great people are willing to sacrifice to become great people.

“Isaac’s Eye wins a whole mess of points for its originality. This odd little jeu d’esprit about the history of science considers immortal matters like male rivalry and overweening ambition from a willfully skewed perspective.” — The New York Times

Lucas Hnath’s other plays include Death Tax (Humana Fest/Steinberg Award), NightNight (short play for Humana Fest), A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney (Soho Rep) and Red Speedo (coming up at the Studio Theatre, Washington DC). A resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2011, Lucas Hnath has enjoyed playwriting residencies with The Royal Court Theatre, London and 24Seven Lab, New York.  He is a two-time winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant for his feature-length screenplays, The Painting, the Machine and the Apple and Still Life.  He received both his BFA and MFA from NYU’s Department of Dramatic Writing and is a lecturer in NYU’s Expository Writing Program.

Colorblind?

A series EXAMINING Racial Identity on Stage AND IN DRAMATIC LITERATURE

A few days after the start of the year 2012, a firestorm of controversy descended upon productions of two very different plays at two very different German-language theaters in Berlin. The issue? So-called “blackfacing” – both productions featured white actors playing black characters while wearing black make-up.

MinstrelsProtestors labeled the productions and theaters as racist, drawing parallels between the productions, minstrelsy and the decidedly racist tradition of blackface within 19th century minstrel shows in the United States, where white performers applied black make-up to themselves to present a deeply stereotyped caricature of a black person. The theaters attempted to defend themselves citing everything from lack of appropriate actors to tradition to the deliberate use of the casting as provocation and artistic expression. Stories of the conflict were picked up by the national and international news media and public forums were held by one of the protested theaters to discuss the topic.

The essential questions raised involved the portrayal of race and ethnicity on stage in today’s Germany, no longer mono-ethnic but multicultural, a country where one in every five persons now has Migrationshintergrund (“immigrant background”) and whose cultural institutions often do not yet reflect this diversity.

English Theatre Berlin helped to continue this conversation and included its audience with Colorblind?, a series of programming on the main stage and THE LAB from August 2012 through January 2013

It began with the main stage production of This Is How It Goes, a scintillating play by Neil LaBute that challenges the conception of the United States as a “post-racial” society and asks very hard questions about the associations that cling to the color of one’s skin, and continued with several staged readings in THE LAB examining this topic in current plays from the United States, Great Britain and Germany (see below).

Each LAB reading was followed by a post-performance discussion moderated by invited guests from the greater Berlin theater community.

Monday, January 14, 2013:

Am I White by Adrienne Dawes

With Priscilla Bergey, Tamika Campbell, Carrie Getman, Matthew Peach and Seumas Sargent

When Neo-Nazi terrorist Wesley Connor returns to prison after a failed bomb plot, he is confronted with the two identities that threaten his position within the White Order of Thule most: fatherhood and his own mixed race heritage. Inspired by the true story of Leo Felton and Erica Chase, Am I White travels between linear narrative, recurring dreams and minstrel show nightmare to discover if a singular self exists in the post-modern, “post-racial” United States.

Adrienne Dawes is an Austin-based playwright. Her work has been produced by American Repertory Theatre of London, Live Girls! Theatre, Little Fish Theatre Company, New England Academy of Theater, New Jersey Repertory Company, Hyde Park Theater, St Idiot Collective, and American Theater Company (Chicago, IL). Her plays have been published by Playscripts, Inc, Smith & Kraus, Heuer Publishing and Vintage Books. Adrienne graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, where she received the Stanley and Evelyn Lipkin Prize for Playwriting. She is a member of ScriptWorks and company member of Salvage Vanguard Theater. Adrienne’s tumblr lives at http://whatshouldwecallplaywrights.tumblr.com

Monday, December 10, 2012:

We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915 by Jackie Sibblies Drury

We Are Proud. - Glen Sheppard (Actor 1) and Alexander Thomas (Actor 2)-WEBwith Lara Babalola, Ben Porter Lewis, Maxine Muster, Glen Sheppard, Tomas Spencer and Alexander Thomas

Presented with special permission from AO International (www.aoiagency.com)

When a group of actors gather to give a presentation on a distant genocide, they realize that summaries are not enough. In their attempt to delve into history they struggle with stereotype, fear, and their own personal histories — uncovering the potential for brutality in all of us.

Following its critically acclaimed premiere at Victory Gardens, Chicago’s preeminent theater for new work, last season, this scintillating new piece opens the season of New York City’s Soho Rep this fall. We are very pleased to present the German premiere of this important new text.

Jackie Sibblies Drury is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Her play We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915 will have its New York premiere at Soho Rep in fall, 2012, and had its world premiere at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. Jackie’s work has been featured at PRELUDE.11, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Victory Gardens 2010 Ignition Festival, American Theater Company’s 10 x 10 Festival, and The Magic Theatre’s Virgin Play Festival. Jackie received a 2012-13 Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists. She was a member of the 2011-12 Soho Rep Writer/Director lab, a 2010-12 New York Theater Workshop Emerging Artist of Color Fellow, and member of The Civilians’ R&D Group. She is the dramaturg and contributing writer for Zero Cost House, a collaboration between Pig Iron Theatre Company and Japanese playwright Toshiki Okada. Jackie is a NYTW Usual Suspect and a MacDowell Colony fellow, and is on committees to organize classes for Pataphysics Playwriting Workshops and The Public School New York. She is a graduate of Brown’s MFA playwriting program, where she received the David Wickham Prize in Playwriting. Her play Social Creatures was commissioned by Trinity Repertory Theater Company in Providence RI, and will premiere there in 2013. Jackie is the inaugural recipient of the Jerome New York Fellowship for 2012-2014.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012:

Schwarz gemacht (How Klaus Found His Blackness and Outlived the Nazis) by Alexander Thomas

Schwarz gemacht - Tomas Spencer (Walter), Alexandra Spencer (Ruth) and Ernest Allan Hausmann (Klaus)_WEBWith Ernest Allan Hausmann, Maxine Muster, Alexandra Spencer, Tomas Spencer, Nicholas Van Pittman

The play, drawing heavily upon history, imagines a meeting between an African-American jazz musician and a patriotic Afrodeutscher in Berlin in 1938. This piece, originally presented in THE LAB in 2006 as Others Within, marks the first time in the nine-year history of THE LAB that a script has been substantially further developed and brought back for another presentation.

Alexander Thomas is an actor and playwright originally from Albany, New York. He originated his solo play Throw Pitchfork at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, California and premiered it Off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop in 2002. Later that same year the play premiered regionally in upstate New York at the Kitchen Theatre Company in Ithaca. Throw Pitchfork was also produced at JAW West Festival at Portland Center Stage in Portland, Oregon and October Fest at The Ensemble Studio Theater in New York City. It was the closing act at The 4th Annual Thespis Monodrama Festival in Kiel, Germany where it received a Besondere Auszeichnung (Special Honors Award). Throw Pitchfork has been published by Playscripts, Inc. (www.playscripts.com). Thomas also co-wrote and performed in Black Stuff, a two-man farce about African-American identity that ran at the Kitchen Theatre Company, Highways Performance Space and the New York Fringe Festival. He recently appeared in Steven Berkoff’s stage adaptation of On The Waterfront which ran in London´s West End at The Theatre Royal Haymarket, as well as the Edinburgh Festival, Nottingham Playhouse and the Hong Kong Arts Festival. On The Waterfront won London’s 2010 Whatsonstage.com award for Best Ensemble. At English Theatre Berlin, he appeared in the 10-minute play festival Utopia/Dystopia. Thomas frequently collaborates with the Kitchen Theatre Company in Ithaca, New York and has most recently appeared there in Broke-ology and Opus.

Monday, October 22, 2012:

Innocence by Dea Loher (translated by Daniel Brunet)

Colorblind_Innocence_webwith Dylan Bandy, Priscilla Bergey, J.T. Burdon, Carrie Getman, Ernest Allan Hausmann, Kristi Hughes, Moses O. Leo, Clayton Nemrow, Helena Prince, Tomas Spencer and Julie Trappett

Followed by a post-performance discussion featuring Julia Lemmle and Sithembile Menck of Bühnenwatch and John von Düffel, dramaturg of the Deutsches Theater production of Unschuld

Unschuld (Innocence) was the play that served as the basis for one of the productions protested earlier this year. Written by Dea Loher, one of Germany’s most popular, prolific and produced contemporary playwrights, this poetic, expressionistic piece tells the stories of a group of seemingly unrelated characters existing at the fringes of society. An unnamed European city by the sea. Fadoul and Elisio, two illegal African immigrants, see a white woman drown and are too afraid of being deported to save her. A blind young woman, Absolutely, dances naked for men who can see. Mrs. Hadit searches out the families of victims of violent acts to beg forgiveness for crimes she did not commit. Franz has found the job of his life: serving the dead as an undertaker’s assistant, while all that his wife, Rosa, wants from him is a child. Rosa’s mother, Mrs. Sugar, celebrates the progression of her diabetes by moving in with them. And Ella, an aging philosopher, burns all of her books and no longer believes in anything but the unreliability of the world.

Dea Loher is unequivocally one of the most significant and highest esteemed contemporary German-language playwrights. The author of nearly 20 plays, multiple radio plays, a libretto, a book of short stories and the recent novel Bugatti taucht auf, Loher has been awarded nearly every significant German prize for excellence as a playwright, including the Bertolt Brecht Literature Prize, the Mülheim Drama Prize and the Berlin Literature Prize, some multiple times. With a body of work dating from 1991, Loher’s plays are marked by innovative uses and combinations of styles of language, merging the poetic with the pedestrian, the literary and the laconic, utilizing the resulting dissonance to great dramatic effect. While her subject matter ranges from small town life to events torn directly from the pages of international news outlets to historical and literary figures such as Medea and the Red Army Faction, Loher continually explores what it is that creates communities, what it is that creates connections between individuals and how these connections are maintained or severed. Loher’s plays have an impact far beyond the boundaries of the German-speaking world; her work has been translated into 28 different languages. Her newest play, Am Schwarzen See, will receive its world premiere at Deutsches Theater Berlin on October 26, 2012.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012:

Belong by Bola Agbaje

Belong_webwith Lara Babalola, Dela Dabulamanzi (Gakpo), Ernest Allan Hausmann, Errol Trotman-Harewood, Martha Fessehatzion and Michael Ojake

Award-winning British playwright of Nigerian descent Bola Agabje, examines a very different side of immigration—coming back home. Kayode, originally from Nigeria, is a Member of Parliament in London, and has done incredibly well for himself, at least until the most recent election. Following a scandalous defeat, caused at least in part by his perception in Britain as an Nigerian, Kayode finds himself returning home to lick his wounds in Nigeria. Once there, however, it quickly becomes clear to him that his fellow Nigerians now see him as British as finds himself embroiled inan entirely new form of political intrigue.

Belong was originally commissioned by Tiata Fahodzi and first produced by Tiata Fahodzi and the Royal Court Theatre at the Royal Court Theatre (Jerwood Theatre Upstairs) on 26th April 2012.

Tiata Fahodzi is a British-African theatre company founded in 1996 as a partnership between Nigerian Femi Elufowoju, jr and Ghanaian Ekua Ekumah. ‘Tiata Fahodzi’ amalgamates Yoruba and Twi to mean ‘theatre of the emancipated.’ The company is based in London and produces theatre of international quality. It is deemed a ‘National Portfolio Organisation’ by Arts Council England, indicating its core significance to the artistic life of the country. Lucian Msamati was appointed Artistic Director in 2010. He seeks to establish the company as thoroughly ‘pan-African’.

Bola Agbaje was a member of the Young Writers’ Programme at the Royal Court Theatre, London, and her first play, Gone too Far!, premiered there in 2007, directed by Bijan Sheibani, and had another sell out run in 2008. The play won the 2008 Olivier Award for an Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliated Theatre. Bola was also nominated the same year for the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright of 2008. Her other plays for theatre include: Three Blind Mice (Cardboard Citizens, 2011); Playing The Game (Tricycle Theatre, 2010); My Territory (Soho Theatre, 2010); Off The Endz (Royal Court, 2010); Anything You Can Do (Soho Theatre, 2009); Detaining Justice (Tricycle Theatre, 2009 – part of the `Not Black And White´ season); Legend Of Moremi (Theatre Royal Stratford East, 2008); Good Neighbours (Young Vic, 2008); In Time (Tiata Fahodzi and Eastern Angles, 2008); Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word (Royal Court, 2007); Reap What You Sow (Young Vic, 2007); Rivers Run Deep (Hampstead Theatre, 2007). Bola is currently developing Gone Too Far! into a screenplay.

Sunday, August 26, 2012:

Neighbors by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Lab_NeighborsWith Lara Babalola, Michelle Bray, Ernest Allan Hausmann, Errol Trotman-Harewood, Alexander Thomas, Dela Dabluamanzi (Gakpo) and Kristi Hughes

Followed by a post-performance discussion moderated by Joy Kristin Kalu

Have you seen the new neighbors? Richard Patterson is an upwardly mobile African-American academic. The family of minstrel performers that has moved in next door is rowdy, tacky, shameless and uncouth. They are not just invading his neighborhood – they’re infiltrating his family, his sanity and his entire post-racial lifestyle.

Neighbors quickly made headlines after its premiere at New York’s Public Theater in 2010 for its provocative examination of racial identity in the supposedly post-racial, post-Obama United States. Jacobs-Jenkins, an African-American in his mid-20s, uses the divisive, racist tradition of minstrel shows (a 19th century form of theater in the United States, featuring white and sometimes black performers in blackface as stereotyped caricatures of black persons) to ask hard questions about race and society.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a Brooklyn-based playwright, dramaturg and performer. His work has been seen at The Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, amnonst many other NEW York theatres, Theater Bielefeld and the National Theatre London. Branden is developing an adaptation of The Octoroon by Dion Boucicault, directed by Mark Ravenhill with Soho Rep. Theater/NYC. His honors include Princess Grace Awards 2009 and 2010, the Dorothy Strelsin Playwriting Fellowship 2010, a fellowship in playwriting from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Paula Vogel Award for Playwriting 2011. He also holds an M.A. in Performance Studies from NYU.

Joy Kristin Kalu holds a doctorate in theater studies and American studies. She currently works at the Freie Universität Berlin and is preparing her dissertation, The Aesthetics of Repetition (Ästhetik der Wiederholung, Transcipt Verlag Bielefeld 2013), for publication. Alongside her scholarly activities, she has also worked as an assistant director and performer at numerous German and US theaters, including The Actors’ Gang in Los Angeles, the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, the Volksbühne in Berlin and the Wooster Group in New York. She presented a lecture on the current “blackfacing” debate, which she views from the standpoint of appropriation art and reenactment, for the symposium “Authenticity Terrorism” held during the 2012 Autorentheatertage presented by the Deutsches Theater.