May 1-May 18, 2008
WITH THE CURRENT
by Sholem Asch
As the ice begins to thaw,
an uncontrollable river of passion and desire
sweeps everyone up with the current…
Scenic Design - Aaron P. Mastin
Lighting - Stephen Arnold
Costume Design - Marc Geller
Production Stage Manager - Jared Goldstein
Center Stage NY
48 West 21st Street, 4th Floor
NYC
*Member Actors' Equity Association - An Equity Approved Showcase
** Member Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers
December 13, 2007
WITH THE CURRENT
A staged reading and 'talk-back'
by Sholem Asch
*Indicates Member Actors Equity Association
The Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Avenue (at 92nd St.)
Presented in collaboration with The Jewish Museum
* * *
December 18, 2007
THE ART OF YIDDISH DRAMA:
MODERNITY CONFRONTS TRADITION
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue (at 34th Street)
*Indicates Member Actors Equity Association
Panelists discussed issues including:
• Are plays
written by Yiddish playwrights Jewish plays?
• What influences do we see of non-Yiddish playwrights of the respective periods in Yiddish plays?
• Why aren't early 20th c/ Yiddish-language plays being done in mainstream theatres with nearly the frequency of turn of the 20th c/ plays from other languages?
• From a dramaturgical standpoint, how would you develop a script for a Yiddish play to bring it to life for contemporary audiences?
Presented in collaboration with the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
* * *
April 13-May 6, 2006
78th Street Theatre Lab
236 W. 78th St.
New York City
THE AMULET
A tale of loss, of hope, of sexual awakening
By Peretz Hirshbein
Directed by Isaac Butler
Adapted and Translated from the original Yiddish
by MARK ALTMAN & ELLEN PERECMAN
Hanna Cheek ~ Anita Keal* ~ Daryl Lathon* ~ David Little*
Equity Approved Showcase
*Indicates Member Actors Equity Association
Set Design by David Birn
Lighting Design by Sabrina Braswell
Percussion by Matt Temkin
Costume Design by Sydney Marcesa
Production Stage Manager: Stacy Connor
* * *
November 21, 2005
78th Street Theatre Lab
236 W. 78th St.
New York City
Staged reading of
Dämmerung
A poetic play with an unsettling vision
By Peretz Hirshbein
Directed by Mark Zeller
* * *
June 9-26, 2005
Common Basis Theatre
750 Eighth Avenue
New York City
CARCASS
An unflinching family drama about a Jewish underclass rarely portrayed on stage
By Peretz Hirshbein
Directed by Mahayana Landowne
Adapted and Translated from the original Yiddish
by Mark Altman & Ellen Perecman
Soraya Broukhim* ~ David Elyha* ~ Valentina Quinn* ~ David M. Raines ~ Nicole Raphael*
Jacqueline Sydney*~ Jeffrey Evan Thomas* ~ Natasha Williams*
Equity Approved Showcase
*Indicates Member Actors Equity Association
Set & Lighting Design by David Birn
Sound by Matt Stine
Costume Design by Diana Berg
Fight Choreographer: Tom Richter
Production Stage Manager: Andi Cohen
Assistant Costume Designer: Leigh Bell
Lighting Assistant: Scott Matthews
* * *
June 7-19, 2005
Common Basis Theatre
750 Eighth Avenue
New York City
Tuesday June 7
Yosl Rakover Speaks to God
The last person alive in one room in one house in Warsaw, 1943
by Zvi Kolitz
Directed & Performed in English by Tony Award winner Vivian Matalon
Directed by Amy Coleman and Performed in Yiddish by David Mandelbaum
* * *
Sunday June 12
Champagne; The Afterlife; and A Night in the Graveyard
Three wonderful examples of Peretz's social and religious criticism,
biting wit and wild imagination
by I.L. Peretz
Directed by Mark Altman
* * *
Sunday June 19
Under the Cross
After a lifetime of running away from it, a man's Jewish-ness catches up with him
by I.D. Berkowitz
Directed by Andre Kirschner Dion,
winner 2004 Jean Dalrymple Award for Best Director
Spencer Chandler has been performing for the last three years in
Slava's Snowshow – in New York, San Francisco, the United Kingdom, Germany and soon in Austria. On television he can be seen in reruns of
Law & Order,
Law & Order: Criminal Intent,
Deadline, and
Jonny Zero. He co-starred in the independent film
Mendy: A Question of Faith as a former Satmar Chasid turned drug dealer, and performed three seasons with The Folksbiene Yiddish Theater with lead roles in
A Klezmer's Tale: Yoshke Muzikant,
An American Family, and
Songs of Paradise. Spencer is the founder and director of Cannery Works, a non-profit arts organization that helps independent artists become established through the production of new work (
www.canneryworks.org).
Clay McLeod Chapman is the creator of the Pumpkin Pie Show, a rigorous storytelling session backed by its own live soundtrack. He is the author of Rest Area, a collection of short stories, and Miss Corpus, a novel.
Cosmin Chivu has worked as an actor and stage Director in Romania, Austria, England, Germany, and America, and has received multiple awards for his work. Until 1999 he acted and directed for theatres in Europe (including the National Theatre of Bucharest, French Institute, Brouhaha Festival- UK, Mistelbach Festival- Austria). In America he directed over 30 plays in New York City, New Jersey and Massachusetts. He has an MFA in Directing from the Actors Studio Drama School. In 2004 he was granted with a lifetime membership of the Actors Studio in NYC and a membership of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. In July 2007 Chivu completed a fellowship with Jack O'Brien at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. Cosmin Chivu currently teaches theatre courses and workshops at Pace University, New York. In recent years he was a guest lecturer for Tisch School of the Arts (NYU), Actors Studio Drama School, and Ramapo College (NJ). See
www.cosminchivu.com.
Rachel Dickstein,the Artistic Director of Ripe Time, devised, choreographed, and directed the world premiere of the critically acclaimed productions Betrothed, based on texts by S. Ansky, Jhumpa Lahiri and Anton Chekhov, and Innocents (based on Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth) both at the Ohio Theatre. Other Ripe Time projects include The Secret of Steep Ravines at P.S. 122, The Holy Mother of Hadley New York by Barbara Wiechmann and co-produced with New Georges, and The Palace AT 4 A.M. (based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe and the work of photographer Sophie Calle) presented at HERE Arts Center. Other recent directing projects include Vijay Iyer and Mike Ladd's In What Language? at the Asia Society, REDCAT, and the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art and Ellen McLaughlin's version of The Trojan Women at Fordham University. Rachel has created and directed other new works for New York Theatre Workshop, New Georges, The Ohio Theatre, SUNY-Purchase, NYSF/Joe's Pub, Lincoln Center Theatre Director's Lab, Drama League Director's Project and Seattle's Annex Theatre. She has served as a resident director at New Dramatists and Assistant Director to dance-theatre luminary Martha Clarke nationally and internationally. She has received grants, commissions, fellowships and residencies from NYSCA, the Rockefeller MAP Fund, P.S. 122, NEA/TCG, the Drama League, the Ko Festival of Performance, and Yale University where she received her B.A.
Marc Geller most recently directed the world premiere of Acts of Love at the Kirk Theatre on Theatre Row. Prior to that he directed Two-Headed at the Berkshire Theatre Festival and the world premiere of Ascension at the Lion Theatre on Theatre Row. Other favorites include the world premieres of The Frankenstein Summer and More Than This, the first NYC revivals of Unidentified Human Remains... (Judith Anderson Theatre) and Exit the King (Theatre Row Theatre), and productions of Marat/Sade (Clurman Theatre), Adjoining Trances (Beckett Theatre), Faustus (INTAR), Holy Ghosts (Judith Anderson Theatre), Dark of the Moon (Theatre Row Theatre), The Shadow Box (Hudson Guild Theatre) and As Is (45th Street Theatre). Marc is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers.
Daniel Gerould is the Lucille Lortel Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Author of Guillotine: Its Legend and Lore (Blast Books, 1992), editor and translator of The Witkiewicz Reader (Northwestern University Press, 1992), and editor of Doubles, Demons, and Dreamers: An International Collection of Symbolist Drama (Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1983). Editor of American Melodrama. Editor of the 12-volume Routledge Harwood Polish and East European Theatre Archive, editor and translator of Witkiewicz's Country House, Mr. Price, and Metaphysics of a Two-Headed Calf, Olesha's Conspiracy of Feelings and Gaczyski's The Little Theatre of the Green Goose. Editor of Theatre/Theory/Theatre. Editor and translator (with Marvin Carlson) of Pixérécourt: Four Melodramas.
Stefan Kanfer is a journalist/writer whose books include The Eighth Sin, A Summer World, The Last Empire, Serious Business, Ball of Fire, and Groucho. He was a writer and editor at Time for more than twenty years. A Literary Lion of the New York Public Library and recipient of numerous writing awards, Kanfer is currently in the distinguished writer program at Southampton College, Long Island University. He lives in New York and on Cape Cod.
Jesse Liebman was graduated in 2007 from The New Actors Workshop (Mike Nichols, George Morrison, Paul Sills) and served as an apprentice at The Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2006. He holds a B.A. in Classics from Princeton University, where he acted, wrote, and directed for The Princeton Triangle Club. Favorite roles include: Valere in Moliere's The Miser; Sergeant Match in Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw; and Juan Preciado in a Story Theatre adaptation of Juan Rulfo's Pedro Paramo.
Andy Miccolis likes making sound. A graduate of the New School Jazz and Contemporary Music Program, Andy has worked as sound designer and composer for A Question of Faith, Dope: A Dance for Rebels (both SuarezDanceTheater), and Trichotomy (Fly By Night Theater) and worked as the assistant sound designer for Nobody's Lunch (The Civilians). He performs with French electro-pop singer elodieO and he's currently preparing to write and record another album in a month for his project Quiet Music for Tiny Robots.
Brianne Moncrief has recently been seen in Rose Colored Glass (Shetler's Theatre 54), Blind Man's Bluff (The Producer's Club), Texas
Law Men (37 Arts), East Village Writer's Bloc (ManhattanTheatreSource),
The Audition (Wings Theatre), the last season of The Sopranos, and in
numerous commercials. Brianne trained at Fordham University, Lincoln
Center and the London Dramatic Academy.
Neil Pepe has been the Artistic Director of the award-winning Atlantic Theater Company since 1992. Under Mr. Pepe's direction the Atlantic, founded by David Mamet and William H. Macy, has established itself as one of the premiere Off Broadway theater companies in New York garnering twelve Tony awards, eight Obie awards and numerous others.
Neil's directing credits at Atlantic include Harold Pinter's The Room and Celebration, the World premieres of David Mamet's Romance (also at the Mark Taper Forum) and Howard Korder's Sea of Tranquility, Jez Butterworth's The Night Heron and Mojo (Drama League nomination), the last major revival of David Mamet's American Buffalo (also at the Donmar Warehouse in London), the American premiere of the award-winning Joe Penhall play Blue/Orange, The Beginning of August by Tom Donaghy (also South Coast Repertory), Wolf Lullaby by Hilary Bell, Clean by Edwin Sanchez, and Shaker Heights by Quincy Long. He also directed the World premiere of Eric Bogosian's Red Angel starring Mr. Bogosian at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Jessica Goldberg's Refuge at Playwrights' Horizons, and Zinnie Harris' Further Than The Furthest Thing at Manhattan Theatre Club.
Alyssa Quint teaches at Princeton University and writes a monthly column for the Forward on Yiddish arts and letters. She received her PhD from Harvard University in 2002 where she wrote her dissertation on the origins of the modern Yiddish theatre. Her articles have appeared in academic journals and collections including Prooftexts, AJS Review, and most recently, Culture Front: Representing Jews in Eastern Europe (Penn 2007). She is co-editing a volume of essays entitled Arguing the Canon: a Festschrift in Honor of Ruth R. Wisse (Harvard 2008) and is writing a book on the Yiddish theatre.
Alisa Solomon directs the Arts & Culture concentration in the MA Program at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She came to Columbia in 2005 after nearly 20 years as a Professor of English/Journalism at Baruch College-CUNY and as a Professor in the Ph.D. programs in Theater and in English at the CUNY Graduate Center.
In addition to contributing occasionally to The Nation, The Forward, The New York Times, Theater, and other publications, she was on staff at the Village Voice for 21 years, where she reviewed thousands of plays and won awards for her reporting on reproductive rights, electoral politics, women's sports, and immigration policy. Nowadays, she contributes theater commentaries on WNYC and is a contributing editor on the weekly radio program "Beyond the Pale: Radical Jewish Culture and Politics" (WBAI). Solomon's book, Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theater and Gender, won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. She is the editor of three anthologies: Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (with Tony Kushner); Theater and Social Change (Theater, 31:3); and The Queerest Art: Essays on Lesbian and Gay Theater (with Framji Minwalla).
Christopher Thorn's credits include:
New York: The Death of Griffin Hunter (Inverse), As You Like It (Poortom), The Sniper (Synapse) Stars in Her Eyes (Ars Nova), Friendly Fire (Studio 42) Baby Steps (Terranova), The Phoenician Women (Synapse), Dead Man's Socks (Ma-Yi).
Regional: The Huntington Theater Company, The Lyric Stage Company of Boston, Gloucester Stage Company and The Mile Square Theater
Training: Wynn Handman, LAMDA, and Boston University School for the Arts (BFA).
