Join us for evening with readings of excerpts from new works by Pascale Anin, Arielle Bloesch and Curtis Clarendon, three emerging writers from the Caribbean. These three playwrights will be paired for a week in New York with their American translator, three downtown directors, and a cast of American actors for a staged reading at the Segal Center. Two of the plays have been translated into English by Philippa Wehle in a two-year partnership with ETC Caraibe. Following the New York readings, ETC Caraibe will reverse the process in 2009, bringing three New York playwrights to Guadeloupe.

The evening is presented by the Segal Theatre Center in collaboration with Robert Lyons from Soho Think Tank, Danielle Vende of ETC Caraibe (Guadeloupe), and Philppa Wehle. With support from the Henri Peyre French Institute, The Graduate Center, CUNY, Professor Francesca Sautman.

The Caribbean Playwright Exchange is a partnership between Soho Think Tank, New York with ETC Caraibe (Guadeloupe) and The US-Caribbean Exchange of Playwrights. Coordinated by Ohio Theater and Artchipel with sup port from the Laura Pels Foundation; Etant donnes: The French-American Fund for the Performing Arts; Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, New York.

Soho Think Tankis the OBIE Award-winning downtown theatre company, now entering its 15th year of programming, presenting, and producing the work of pioneering new artists at the Ohio Theatre in New York.

Ecritures Theatrales Contemporaines en Caraibe(ETC Caraibe) is an organization in the Caribbean whose mission is the discovery and promotion of new Caribbean playwrights and the distribution of their scripts. ETC Caraibe also organizes playwrighting workshops for contemporary Caribbean theater writ ers throughout the Caribbean as well as special events such as festivals, col loquia, panels and competitions.

Danielle Vende is artistic director of ETC Caraibe(Ecriture theatrale contempo raine en.Caraibe), an association devoted to the discovery of new playwrights based in the Caribbean. Its objective is also to promote their work through staged readings and full productions in regional, national and international venues. Jose Pliya is artistic director of ETC Caraibe(Ecriture theatrale con temporaine en.Caraibe), an association devoted to the discovery of new play wrights based in the Caribbean. Its objective is also to promote their work through staged readings and full productions in regional, national and inter national venues.

Pascale Anin is an actor, director and playwright. Her first piece And I Thank God is a Woman was a great success at the Festival d’Avignon in 2007. In her work, she explores issues of child soldiers and the power of motherhood. In her play Les immortels,a married couple is waiting for a child. At first glance it looks like an every day occurrence, but a strange atmosphere of remorse hangs over them. Who is the young man called Simon? What’s hap pening in their friend Hermann’s mind? Why did they move to France? What are they running away from?

Arielle Bloesch was born in Switzerland in 1963. After studying in Paris, she worked as an actress, but quickly moved into directing and founded the theatre company Metitheatre. Since moving to Martinique in 2000, she has worked with ETC Caraïbe as a playwright. In her play Port d’ames, the King’s three sons are fed up with hard work, preferring to take advantage of their princely status. So they murder their father, setting the course for a brutal struggle for power.

Curtis Clarendon, born on the British Island Dominique, has written many plays which deal with the passions and torments of his native country in a way that mixes sensitivity and intensity. He is also a director and an actor. In his play Shellie, apastor father lives with his only son. The son cannot accept his mother’s death. The father cannot accept the son’s love for another man. Set in the West Indies, somewhere between power and incomprehension.

Robert Lyons, founding Artistic Director of the Ohio Theatre, is a writer/ director whose work includes The Doorman’s Double Duty, No Meat No Irony, and PR Man. New York productions include commissioned adaptations rang ing from Dostoevsky’s The Possessed and The Fever to Jay McInerney’s How it Ended. His work as a director has been seen at The Public, The Vineyard Theater, DTW, and other venues in NYC and around the country. Under Robert Lyons’s leadership, the Ohio Theatre has become widely recognized as a pillar of the downtown theatre community.

Translator Philippa Wehle is Professor Emeritus of Drama Studies and Language and Culture, Purchase College, State University of New York, and author of Le théâtre populaire selon Jean Vilar(Actes Sud, 1991), Drama Contemporary: France (PAJ, 1986), and Contemporary Plays from France (PAJ, Fall 2007). She has also translated many contemporary French-language plays (by Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, José Pliya, Philippe Minyana and others). Dr. Wehle is a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters.

6:30 p.m., Monday, November 24, 2008 Martin E. Segal Theatre. Free!