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The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Announces
 SEGAL TALKS Week Six

Daily Live Online Conversations with US and Global Theatre Artists
 Monday, May 4, 2020 – Friday, May 8, 2020, 12 noon EDT 

 “New Times need new Forms of Theatre.” Bertolt Brecht

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center is proud to announce the sixth weekly line-up of its new global series, SEGAL TALKS. New York, US, and international theatre artists, curators, researchers and academics will talk daily for one hour with Segal Center’s director, Frank Hentschker, about life and art in the Time of Corona and speak about challenges, sorrows, and hopes for the new Weltzustand— the State of the World. The Segal Center is the only theatre institution in NYC and the US creating original content daily during the week.

Week Six Participants: Andrea Tompa & Anna Lengyel (Hungary); Lola Arias (Argentina); Mihaela Drăgan & Mihaela Michailov (Romania); Zuleikha Allana (India); Stacy Klein & Stephanie Monseu (USA)

The newly introduced ad-free SEGAL TALKS will be live-streamed in English on HowlRound Theatre Commons and on the Segal Center Facebook. All the previous SEGAL TALKS will be found on HowlRound, the Segal Center Facebook, and the Segal Center YouTube Channel. The Segal Theatre Center will raise money for theatre artists and companies. This work is in collaboration with HowlRound Theatre Commons, based at Emerson College.

Viewers can submit questions during the live streaming at SegalTalks@gmail.com. Visit www.theSegalCenter.org or contact mest@gc.cuny.edu for more information on SEGAL TALKS.

For press information please contact Frank Hentschker at fhentschker@gc.cuny.edu

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SEGAL TALKS WEEK 6 SCHEDULE 

MONDAY, MAY 4, 2020
12 noon EDT

Andrea Tompa & Anna Lengyel
Click here to join us for an update on the situation for theatre artists in Hungary.

  Andrea Tompa is a Hungarian writer, theatre critic and academic. Her main field of interest is contemporary Hungarian and East European theater and drama. She is the editor-in-chief of the theater magazine SZINHAZ (Theater). She is an academic at Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania. She is the author of four novels.

  Anna Lengyel is a dramaturg, translator, theatre director and producer. She runs the only documentary theatre in Hungary called PanoDrama, where she produces and directs mostly verbatim shows about sensitive social issues like the racist murders of the Roma in 2008-2009, public education, the Shoah, pedophilia, hate crimes or cancer for instance, an illness she’s now had for over three years. She regularly works on three continents, with Árpád Schilling, Tamás Ascher and Robert Wilson among others. She is a Fulbright alumna. Photo by Zsolt Reviczky

 MONDAY, MAY 5, 2020
12 noon EDT

Lola Arias
Click here to join us for an update on the situation for theatre artists in Argentina. 

  Lola Arias is a writer, theatre and film director. She is a multifaceted artist whose work crosses people from different backgrounds (war veterans, former communists, migrant children, etc.) in theatre, film, literature, music and visual art projects. Arias’ productions play with the overlap zones between reality and fiction. «Sitting in the theatre, wandering a site-specific location or watching a film, we are inculcated into others’ narratives wound into their complexities, joys and disappointments. At the same time, we are also invited and at times confronted, in an extraordinary and acute way, to reflect on the contingencies and fragilities of our own stories, individual and collective, as well as on our shifting, unresolved relation to the precarious and dangerous machinery that is social and political history» (Etchells, in Re-enacting Life, 2019).  Lola Arias was awarded very prestigious prizes for her works (Premio Konex 2014, Preis der Autoren 2018) and her pieces have been performed at festivals such as: Lift Festival, London, Under the Radar, NY, Festival d’Avignon, Theater Spektakel, Zurich, Wiener Festwochen, Festival Theaterformen, Brunswick/Hanover, Spielart Festival, Munich, and Berlinale, as well as in venues like Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, Redcat, LA, Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, Parque de la memoria, Buenos Aires, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Royal Court Theatre, London.

MONDAY, MAY 6, 2020
12 noon EDT

Mihaela Drăgan & Mihaela Michailov  

Click here to join us for an update on the situation for theatre artists in Romania.

  Mihaela Drăgan is an actress and playwright who lives in Bucharest and works in several European countries. In 2014, she founds Giuvlipen Theatre Company, for which she is an actress and playwright, together with other Roma actresses. Over the last years, she has been working in Berlin as an actress for Maxim Gorki Theatre, Heimathafen Neukölln, Theater Aufbau Kreuzberg. She is also a trainer at Theatre of the Oppressed where she works with Roma women on their specific issues in Romania. In addition, she has been worked with refugee girls in Germany as a theatre trainer. She was one of the six finalists for The 2017 Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award from New York which acknowledges the exceptional work of 20 theatre women around the world. In 2018, Drăgan was a resident artist in Hong Kong at Para Site Contemporary Art Centre where she was developing Roma Futurism – that lies at the intersection of Roma culture with technology and witchcraft. In the same year is acknowledged by PEN World Voices International Play Festival 2018 in New York as one of the ten most respected dramatists of the world. In 2019 is one of the playwrights selected for the acclaimed Royal Court Theatre International Summer Residency in London where she wrote a science fictional play about a future utopian society of Roma witches who control technology and fight neo-fascist politics in Europe.

  Mihaela Michailov is a playwright and a cultural educator, lecturer at the University of Dram and Film în Bucharest. She is one of the co-founders of the independent space, “Replika Centre for Educational Theatre”, based în Bucharest. She is very much interested in creating educational and political plays focused on the causes of various social inequalities and on vulnerable issues such as: Romanian state abuses regarding non-represented categories, the aggressive transformations in post-socialist times, the power system in the Romanian Educational field. Her plays have been translated in Bulgarian, English, French, Hungarian, Italian, German, and Spanish. Mihaela Michailov’s play Google my Country!, directed by Alexandra Badea, was staged at Teatrul Foarte Mic in 2010 and was shown abroad at Centre culturel Theo Argence de Saint-Priest, Festival, Transversales, Nuit des auteurs”; at Scène Nationale du Petit-Quevilly, the Festival, Corpsde Textes Europe”; at Maison d’Europe et d’Orient, Paris, Festival, L’Europe des Théâtres”. The play received a second prize at Eurodram – European Network of Theatrical Translations),“Mousson d’été à l’Abbaye des Prémontrés (Maison Européenne des Écritures Contemporaines”. Mihaela Michailov is experienced in documentary theatre. Her play, Heated Heads (2010, directed by David Schwartz), dramatises the so-called “Mineriad”, an episode of State repression on June13-15, 1990 in which large groups of miners were carted to Bucharest in order to break up a peaceful demonstration against a government dominated by ex-communist leaders. Heated Heads has been performed at various festivals in Romania. It was also invited at HAU, Berlin, in December 2012, for the festival Many Years After…In 2011 her play Bad Kids (directed by Alexandru Mihăescu), written for one actress who performs nine characters, was represented at LUNI Theatre in Bucharest. The play was then invited for the “Romanian Days”in Munich, in 2011 and at Mousson d’hiver in the Théâtre de la Manufacture –Centre Dramatique National de Nancy (2014). Fragments of the play were translated at Édition théâtrale, Paris. The play had a public reading in July 2014 at the Festival d’Avignon. The play was published in 2016 at Solitaires Intempestifs. Bad Kids was staged at Centre National Dramatique, Nancy, in 2015. In 2016 the play was stagedar Parkaue Theatre in Berlin, in the context of Fabulamundi. In the last years, Mihaela Michailov has been working with the director Radu Apostol, one of theco-fouders of Replika Centre for Educational Theatre. Together they have created performances about kids whose parents are working abroad, about the legislation regarding the rights of kids in Romania, about the vulnerabilities of the educational system in Romania, about mothers confronted with discrimination due to the facts that their kids suffer from autism. The play Offline Family – on the theme of migration from the perspective of kids – was performed in more than 15 cities in Romania and also in the frame of the festival, Eastern European Playwrights, Women Write the New”, New York, 2012 and at Badisches Theater Karlsruhe in 2013.

MONDAY, MAY 7, 2020
12 noon EDT

Zuleikha Chaudhari

Click here to join us for an update on the situation for theatre artists in India.

  Zuleikha Chaudhari is a theatre director and lighting designer – her work takes the form of performances and installations and her ongoing research considers the structures and codes of performance as well the function and processes of the actor as reality and truth production. Formally she is very interested in the role of the viewer in the performative experience and the tension between looking or watching and doing or acting. Her current research uses archival documents (texts and photographs) to develop theatrical performances as a way of thinking about the relationship between production of memory, the role of the archive and how that pertains to the retrieval and reliving of an event. The constructed narratives within the works looked at the relationship between personal lived experience and memories and larger historical events and narratives. These works use a combination of reportage, portraiture, documentary, and fiction – the editing, re-interpretation and re-positioning of speculative ideas, opinions, beliefs and anecdotes towards the production of new narratives is central to these investigations about the relationship between history and theatre. Since 2014 she has been exploring the framework of law as performance, the role of performance in law and the performativity of legal truth-production. Law’s performativity describes a way of forming, of per-forming the world through a certain structure of the use of signs that is always at the same time a procedure and a connection of a (historical) sign to a (new) context. The concept of performativity here describes a mode of doing something to the world.

MONDAY, MAY 8, 2020
12 noon EDT

Stacy Klein & Stephanie Monseu
Click here to join us for an update on the situation for theatre artists in the US.

 Stacy Klein is the Founder and Artistic Director of Double Edge Theatre. She began the company in 1982, in Boston, and in 1994 moved the theatre and her family to a 105-acre former dairy farm in rural Ashfield, MA, to create a sustainable artistic home. Klein’s three current original performances—Leonora & Alejandro, La Maga y El Maestro, inspired by surrealist visionary painter Leonora Carrington; SUGA; and the indoor-outdoor traveling spectacle Leonora’s World, are part of the Latin American Cycle and were created with her longtime ensemble both on the farm and on tour. They are at the forefront of her creative vision and define her concept of “living culture.” Accompanied by living culture is Double Edge’s Art Justice, which further acknowledges the need for combining justice with artistic practice through rural residency, collaboration, and access to facilities. Rena Mirecka mentored Klein since the 1970s, and Klein has a Ph.D. in Theatre History and Criticism. In 2013, she received the 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award recognizing exemplary US artists in the field.

Photo by David Welland

  Stephanie Monseu and Keith Nelson founded NYC’s Bindlestiff Family Cirkus in 1994. Monseu is Bindlestiff’s Artistic Director, as well as a professional entertainer, MC and ring mistress, tour manager and booker. Since 2009, Monseu has partnered with municipal, arts, and human services agencies as the director of Bindlestiff’s Cirkus After School and Coarc Cirkus – Social Circus programs for adults with neurodiversity and youth in Columbia County, NY and NYC. Bindlestiff’s activities include annual performance seasons in NYC and the Hudson Valley; national touring; free public events (NYC Unicycle Festival); support for emerging circus artists (First of May Award, Bindlestiff’s Open Stage) and Cavalcade of Youth (artists under 21). Photo by Maike Schulz

ABOUT SEGAL TALKS:

SEGAL TALKS is a daily one-hour LIVE online conversation from Monday to Friday — about making art and making sense in the Time of Corona. SEGAL TALKS was conceived, created and curated by Frank Hentschker in March 2020. All the previous SEGAL TALKS will be found on HowlRound, the Segal Center Facebook, and the Segal Center YouTube Channel. The Segal Theatre Center will raise money for theatre artists and companies. This work is in collaboration with HowlRound Theatre Commons, based at Emerson College.

SEGAL TALKS has been made possible by the support of Susan and Jack Rudin(†), the Hearst Foundation, and Marvin Carlson, Sidney E. Cohn Chair, The Graduate Center CUNY.

ABOUT THE MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER:

Originally founded in 1979 as the Center for Advanced Studies in Theatre Arts (CASTA), The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center was renamed in March of 1999 to recognize Martin E. Segal, one of New York City’s outstanding leaders of the arts. The Segal Center curates over thirty events throughout the Spring and Fall academic seasons, all free and open to the public. Dedicated to bridging the gap between the professional and academic theatre communities, the Segal Center presents readings, performance, lectures, and artists and academics in conversation. In addition, the Segal Center presents three annual festivals (PRELUDE, PEN World Voices: International Pay Festival, and The Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance) and publishes and maintains three open access online journals (Arab Stages, European Stages, and The Journal of American Drama and Theatre). The Segal Center also publishes many volumes of plays in translation and is the leading publisher of plays from the Arab world. The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (MESTC) is a vital component of the Theatre Program’s academic culture and creating in close collaboration a research nexus, focusing on dramaturgy, new media, and global theatre. The Segal Center provides an intimate platform where both artists and theatre professionals can actively participate with audiences to advance awareness and appreciation. www.TheSegalCenter.org

THE SEGAL TEAM
Executive Director: Frank Hentschker
Creative Producer: Sunyoung Kim
Media Supervisor: Jackie Spaventa
Next Generation Fellow: May Adra
Senior Assistant Director of Programs: Cory Tamler
Junior Assistant Director of Programs: Kyueun Kim
Assistant to the Director: Andie Lerner

THE GRADUATE CENTER, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, of which the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center is an integral part, is the doctorate-granting institution of The City University of New York (CUNY). An internationally recognized center for advanced studies and a national model for public doctoral education, the school offers more than thirty doctoral programs, as well as a number of master’s programs. Many of its faculty members are among the world’s leading scholars in their respective fields, and its alumni hold major positions in industry and government, as well as in academia. The Graduate Center is also home to twenty-eight interdisciplinary research centers and institutes focused on areas of compelling social, civic, cultural, and scientific concerns. Located in a landmark Fifth Avenue building, The Graduate Center has become a vital part of New York City’s intellectual and cultural life with its extensive array of public lectures, exhibitions, concerts, and theatrical events. www.gc.cuny.edu

HowlRound Theatre Commons at www.HowlRound.com is a free and open platform for theatre makers worldwide that amplifies progressive, disruptive ideas about the art form and facilitates connection between diverse practitioners. HowlRound envisions a theatre field where resources and power are shared equitably in all directions, contributing to a more just and sustainable world.

HowlRound was founded on an organizing principle in the “commons”—a social structure that invites open participation around shared values. HowlRound is a knowledge commons that encourages freely sharing intellectual and artistic resources and expertise. It is our strong belief that the power of live theatre connects us across difference, puts us in proximity of one another, and strengthens our tether to our commonalities. HowlRound is based at Emerson College, Boston. http://www.howlround.com