| CUNY Presents Three Playwrights "Confronting History" |
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Confronting History: America Before World War IIThree new plays written by Tanya Barfield, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh and Emily DeVotiDirected by Sturgis Warner Thursday, May 17, 6:30 pm Martin E. Segal Theatre Center The Graduate Center, CUNY 365 Fifth Ave at 34th Street FREE web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc  About the Playwrights:  Playwright Tanya Barfield's work is featured in the City University of New York's "Confronting History."  Playwright Emily DeVoti's work is featured in the City University of New York's "Confronting History."  Playwright Saïd Sayrafiezadeh's work is featured in The City University of New York's "Confronting History." Emily DeVoti's plays have been developed in NYC by New York Theater Workshop, Underwood Theatre, Cherry Lane Alternative, Six Figures, Judith Shakespeare Company, HotINK/NYU, and produced by New Georges and Shakespeare & Co. (Lenox, MA). Her play "H/M" will be produced in Fall 2007 by the Perry Street Theatre in Exile. She is the founding Theater Editor of The Brooklyn Rail and has an MFA in dramatic writing from NYU/Tisch. "Beyond the Veil" stages a fictitious meeting between novelist Edith Wharton and African American intellectual W.E.B. DuBois Saïd Sayrafiezadeh’s essays and stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Open City, Columbia Journal of Literature and Art, and elsewhere. "New York is Bleeding" was commissioned by New York Theatre Workshop and developed at the Sundance Theatre Lab. He is currently at work on a memoir about growing up the son of an Iranian father and a Jewish-American mother, both of whom were members of a communist organization in the United States called the Socialist Workers Party. It will be published by Random House in fall 2008. About the Director: Sturgis Warner is directing for the first time a reading at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Warner directed full productions of "A Number" by Caryl Churchill (Adirondack Theatre Festival), two Bernarda Alba plays by Oscar Colon, "The Last of Bernarda" (Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, 2006 HOLA Awards: Best Play, Best Ensemble) and Becoming Bernarda (PRTT, ACE Award: Best Production, 2002), Michael Allegra's "Housewarming" and "Lucy and the Conquest" by Cusi Cram for New Jersey Rep, Ian Cohen's "Lenny & Lou" (29th Street Rep), "Fuente" by Cusi Cram (Barrington Stage), ten-minute plays by Craig Wright, Jeffrey Essmann and Saïd Sayrafiezadeh at the Humana Festival (Actors Theatre of Louisville), "Swimming With Sturgeon" by Ezra Goldstein (Abingdon Theatre Company), Ted LoRusso's "Prelude to the First Day" (Emerging Artists), Robert Mitchell's Vincent Van Gogh musical, "Vincent" (Wings Theatre), Adam Rapp's "Dreams of the Salthorse" (Encore Theatre, San Francisco), "The Mooncalf" by Elisabeth Karlin (Abingdon Theatre Company), "All Fall Away" by Saïd Sayrafiezahdeh (Immigrant Theatre Company), Gordon Dahlquist's "The Secret Machine" (Twilight Theatre Company), and "SUITS" by Michael John Garcés (Twilight). A long time actor, Sturgis helps many playwrights develop new scripts and projects and is a member of New York Theatre Workshop 's Usual Suspects and is also very active with The Lark Play Development Center . About the Martin E. Segal Center: The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (MESTC), The Graduate Center, CUNY, is a non-profit center for theatre, dance, and film affiliated with CUNY's Ph.D. Program in Theatre. Originally founded in 1979 as the Center for Advanced Studies in Theatre Arts (CASTA), it was renamed in March of 1999 in recognition of one of New York City's outstanding leaders of the arts. The Center's primary focus is to bridge the gap between the academic and professional performing arts communities by providing an open environment for the development of educational, community-driven, and professional projects in the performing arts. As a result, MESTC is home to theatre scholars, students, playwrights, actors, dancers, directors, dramaturgs, and performing arts managers, as well as both the local and international theatre communities. The Center presents staged readings to further the development of new and classic plays, lecture series, televised seminars featuring professional and academic luminaries, and arts in education programs, and maintains its long-standing visiting-scholars-from-abroad program. In addition, the Center publishes a series of highly regarded academic journals, as well as books, including plays in translation, all written and edited by renowned scholars. |
