Download Dossier Final Draft - Catalan Institute of America

The Martin E. Segal Theater Center and The Institut Ramon Llull present
SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA at the 7th Annual 2010 PRELUDE Festival.
PRELUDE is a festival exploring the forefront of contemporary NYC theater and performance.
Past years have featured over 20 short performances, readings, and open rehearsals with a
focus on works-in-progress, as well as panels and informal networking opportunities. It also
looks beyond New York City with its international SPOTLIGHT series. After focusing on Japan,
Argentina, Poland and Korea this year’s SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA will showcase the work of
contemporary Catalan theater artists - Àngels Aymar, Marta Buchaca, Sergi Belbel and
Esteve Soler. Catalonia, home to Barcelona, is a distinct region of Spain with it’s own
language and cultural history. With the generous support of The Institut Ramon Llull four new
American translations have been commissioned which will be presented at the PRELUDE
Festival. The SPOTLIGHT brings together playwrights in collaboration with New York City
translators and directors in a cross cultural conversation around the production and
development of new theatrical texts. The plays range in style and content from a dark comedy
about the financial crisis, an immigrant story of a cuban exile, a waiting room drama and a
surrealistic social commentary in 7 scenes on the subject of progress.
Excerpts of the Plays will be presented and followed by a Panel Discussion on
October 1, 2010 at 3 p.m. at Elebash Hall, CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue ~ New York, NY
www.theSegalCenter.org ~ www.llull.cat
SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA will also present full readings of each of these new translations in a
series to be hosted by different theatrical organizations across New York City.
Offside by Sergi Belbel on Sept 30 at 7pm at The Lark Development Center
(939 8th Ave. btwn 55th & 56th)
Girls Shouldn’t Play Soccer by Marta Buchaca on Oct 3 at 7pm at New Georges
(The Room 520 Eighth Avenue, Suite 326)
Solavaya by Àngels Aymar on Oct 4 at 6:30 pm at Repertorio Español
(138 East 27th St)
Against Progress by Esteve Soler on Oct 5 at 7 pm at La MaMa
(1st Floor Theatre 74A East 4th St)
SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA ~ Curated by Mallory Catlett
ALL SPOTLIGHT EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA
About the Festival:
The 2010 PRELUDE festival will be from Wednesday, September 29 to Friday, October 1, 2010 @ the Martin
E. Segal Theatre at the Graduate Center at CUNY. PRELUDE 10 is curated by Morgan von Prelle Pecelli and
Frank Hentschker, dramaturgy by Mashinka Firunts, and produced by Arwen Lowbridge. SPOTLIGHT:
CATALONIA curated by Mallory Catlett. www.nycprelude.org
About the Presenters:
The Martin E. Segal Theatre 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 single
volumes of importance, including plays in translation, all written and edited by renowned scholars.
www.theSegalCenter.org
The Institut Ramon Llull (www.llull.cat) is a public institution founded by the Government of Catalonia and the
Government of the Balearic Islands. Its mission is to promote Catalan language and culture internationally, in all
of its variations and methods of expression. The objective of the Performing and Visual Arts Department, that
covers the areas of theater, dance, music and the visual arts, is to increase awareness of the Catalan artistic
production abroad, by organizing international cultural shows, helping artists, performers and producers
participate in the most important international events and festivals, providing travel grants and financial support
for specific projects, as well as information on Catalan artistic heritage and contemporary art scene.
About the Reading Hosts:
A laboratory for new voices and new ideas, the LARK PLAY DEVELOPMENT CENTER brings together actors,
directors, playwrights and audiences to allow writers to learn about their own work by seeing and hearing it, and
by receiving feedback from a dedicated and supportive community. The company reaches into untapped local
populations and across international boundaries to seek out and embrace unheard voices and diverse
perspectives, celebrating differences in language and worldviews. The Lark also plays a leading role in
advancing unknown writers and their works to audiences through carefully stewarded partnerships with a host of
theaters, universities, community-based organizations, and NGOs, locally, nationally and globally. The Lark is
led by Producing Director, John Clinton Eisner and Managing Director, Michael Robertson. www.larktheatre.org
New Georges is an award-winning nonprofit theater company which produces ambitiously theatrical new plays
downtown; and is a play and artist development organization, providing an artistic home to some of the most
adventurous theater artists (who are women) working today. www.newgeorges.org
Repertorio Español was founded in 1968 to introduce the best of Latin American, Spanish and HispanicAmerican theatre in distinctive, quality productions. Throughout its history, Repertorio has introduced thousands
of adult and student audiences to the best of Latin American, Spanish and Hispanic-American theatre, from
classic Spanish drama, nearly the entire canon of Federico Garcia Lorca to works by new and/or emerging
Hispanic American theatre artists. www.repertorio.org La MaMa Experimental Theatre is a world-renowned cultural organization led by founder Ellen Stewart. For 48
years La MaMa has passionately pursued its original mission to develop, nurture, support, produce and present
new and original performance work by artists of all nations and cultures. We believe that in order to flourish, art
needs the company of colleagues, the spirit of collaboration, the comfort of continuation, a public forum in which
to be evaluated and fiscal support. www.lamama.org
SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA: The Plays and the Artists
SOLAVAYA by Àngels Aymar
In a small town in the pyrenees, an émigré couple lives in emotional isolation. The man is cuban. His wife is
french. As the man's illness progresses, their daughter becomes his caretaker. Into this protected world enters a
son who does not know where he belongs. The play is a bittersweet drama about memory, exile, and finding
home by Àngels Aymar translated by US Latina playwright Caridad Svich.
Àngels Aymar -
Actress (theatre, cinema and television), playwright and director. Resident playwright
at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya 2006/07/08. In 1990 she created her own company L’unranlaltre. Author of
more than twenty plays awarded, performed, translated and published in several languages. Her plays have
been performed in Europe, Latin America and the United States. In 1992 the Generalitat de Catalunya granted
her a scholarship for an internship with the company The Wilma Theater, Philadelphia, USA. In 2004 she
presented her play La Rialla Inacabada at the FIL of Guadalajara (Mexico). In 2005 she received a grant for the
writing of a play from the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes. She is the first Catalan playwright invited to
participate in the Pen World Voices Festival NYC (2008). In 2009, she premiered the work Trueta at the TNC and
presented La Indiana at the Universidad de las Artes y las Letras de La Havana, Cuba.
Caridad Svich (Translator) is a US playwright-translator-songwriter-editor of Cuban-Argentine-Spanish-Croatian
descent. Her play The House of the Spirits, based on the novel by Isabel Allende, receives regional premieres
this fall at Denver Theatre Center and Mixed Blood. She's alumna of New Dramatists, founder of NoPassport
theatre alliance and press, contributing editor of TheatreForum and associate editor of Routledge Uk's
Contemporary Theatre Review. Her play In the Time of the Butterflies, based on the novel by Julia Alvarez,
premieres in NYC in February 2011. Visit her at www.caridadsvich.com
Hillary Spector (Director) has worked as a choreographer, director and performer. Venues include: P.S. 122,
Classic Stage Company, Public Theater, Alice Tully Hall, National Theatre of Cataluña, Princeton University,
Spoleto Festival USA, L’ Opera D' Angers, L’ Opera de Nantes, L’ Opera de Nice, L.A. Opera, Seattle Opera, and
Tivoli Theatre, Copenhagen. She is a member of AEA and AGMA. More information at hillaryspector.com
OFFSIDE by Sergi Belbel
A story of five characters in a time of economic crisis. Pol and Anna struggle to provide for a daughter, Lisa, who
dreams of studying in the US, and a grandfather, Josep, who needs full-time care. Pol has taken a pay cut.
Lisa's grant application is turned down due to government deficits. Ricky, Josep's immigrant caretaker,
struggles to send money home to his son who dreams of becoming a soccer star. Anna refuses to give up her
few luxuries to save money. Since a major expense is maintaining Josep in his own apartment, the unthinkable
becomes thinkable: killing grandfather. Belbel’s distinctive brand of dark humor is employed as the characters
play out their fantasies in the desperation of making ends meet.
Sergi Belbel -
Playwright, director, theatre translator and Director of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya
since 2006. He has written around twenty plays, notable are: Elsa Schneider, Tàlem, Carícies, Després de la
pluja, Morir, La sang, El temps de Planck, Forasters, Mòbil and A la Toscana. His work has been performed in:
Portugal, France, Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland,
Iceland, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland, Italy, Greece, Luxembourg, Canada, the United States (New York), Colombia,
Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile. He has translated, among others, plays by Molière, Goldoni,
Koltès, Marivaux, De Filippo, Perec, Jon Fosse and Beckett and directed plays by classical and contemporary
authors such as Shakespeare, Calderón, Molière, Goldoni, Koltès, Mamet, De Filippo, Marivaux, Némirovsky,
Guimerà, Vilanova, Benet i Jornet, David Plana and Jordi Galceran. He has been awarded, among others, the
following prizes: 1993-95 Premi Nacional de Literatura Dramàtica, Generalitat de Catalunya; Premio Nacional de
Literatura Dramática, Ministerio de Cultura; 1999 Molière award for Best Comedy (Després de la pluja); 2000
Premi Nacional de Teatre, Generalitat de Catalunya; 2002 Max Performing Arts Award for International
Promotion; and 2003 Premi Ciutat de Barcelona de les Arts Escèniques for the Dramatisation and Direction of
Dissabte, diumenge i dilluns (Saturday, Sunday, Monday) by De Filippo (TNC, 2002). He holds a degree in French
Language and Literature from the UAB. Founding member of the Aula de Teatre at the Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona. Professor of Playwriting at the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona since 1988. www.tnc.cat
SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA: The Plays and the Artists
Marion Peter Holt’s translations of contemporary Spanish and Catalan plays have been performed in New York,
London and regional and university theaters throughout the US. His translation of Belbel’s Blood recently had its
Australian premiere at Theatre Works-Melbourne. Other recent translations include: Marta Buchaca’s Sorry and
Guillem Clua’s critically-acclaimed Marburg. He is a professor emeritus of Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center
and a member of the Dramatists Guild.
Mallory Catlett (Director) is a director/dramaturg whose recent works include: Beowulf (Banana Bag & Bodice),
Red Fly/Blue Bottle (Latitude 14) and R ii & Vanya (Restless Productions NYC). Her work has been performed
throughout NYC, site-specifically and toured to Canada,The Netherlands, France & Ireland. She is winner of the
Elliot Hayes Award for Dramaturgy, a NYSCA Individual Artist Commission and a MAP FUND grantee. This is the
3rd reading she has directed of Belbel's work. For more info: www.mallorycatlett.net
GIRLS SHOULDN'T PLAY SOCCER by Marta Buchaca
Anna, a 12 year old girl, Lídia, a 30 year old woman, and Josep, a 50 year old man, are in a car accident. Their
families don't know who the other people in the car are. Where do they know each other from? Where were they
headed? And most important: Why have none of them had ever mentioned the other two?
Marta Buchaca -
playwirght and director. She is currently part of the T6 Project (2009-2011) at the
Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, where she recently premiered A mi no em diguis amor (2010). In 2009 she
premiered Plastilina (XXXV Premi de Teatre Ciutat d’Alcoi and Runner-up for the Premio Marqués de Bradomín
2007 at Sala Beckett, directed by Marta Angelat) and Les nenes no haurien de jugar a futbol, (Grec 2009 and
Versus Teatre 2010, directed by Marta Buchaca). In 2007 she premiered L’Olor sota la pell (V Premi Joaquim
Bartrina de Reus 2005, Sala Beckett, directed by Juan Carlos Martel) and En conserva (Institut del Teatre and
Obrador de la Sala Beckett, directed by Marta Buchaca). In 2006, her play Emergència was the Runner-up of the
III Premi Fundació Romea 2006 for theatrical texts. In television she has worked as a scriptwriter for El cor de la
ciutat (TV3) and is currently a scriptwriter for the series Fills i germans (TV3). She holds a degree in Humanities
from the UAB and trained in playwrighting at the Centre d’Études Théatrales de Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium) and
the Obrador de la Sala Beckett.
Rowan Ricardo Phillips (Translator) is a graduate of Swarthmore College (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D.).
His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The New Republic, and The Kenyon Review, among others;
and his translations from the Catalan in venues such as The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Best European
Fiction 2010 and the forthcoming Best European Fiction 2011. He is the author of When Blackness Rhymes With
Blackness and teaches at SUNY Stony Brook.
May Adrales (Director) has directed at Goodman Theatre; Williamstown Theater Festival; The Public Theater;
Second Stage Theatre; New York Theater Workshop; The Hangar Theatre; Long Wharf Theatre; Ensemble Studio
Theater. Awards and Residencies: TCG New Generations Grant (Lark Play Development Center); SSDC Denham
Fellowship; Van Lier Fellowship, NYTW Fellowship, SoHo Writers/Directors Lab, Women’s Project Director’s Lab;
SDCF Observership, and Drama League Directing Fellowship. She worked as an Artistic Associate at The Public
Theater for two years. Faculty, Public Shakespeare Lab. MFA directing, Yale School of Drama.
AGAINST PROGRESS by Esteve Soler
7 short plays that mix horror and comedy. 7 moments as bizarre as familiar. 7 surrealistic visions of a progress
that is not progressing, a progress full of disdain, the same progress as ever. 1) A middle-aged couple tries to get
rid of a Third World boy who has mysteriously showed up under their table. 2) A man hit by a streetcar cries out
for help in the middle of the night. While he lies dying, a woman explains to him why she won’t call the
ambulance. 3) Two businessmen consider the advantages of applying the most radical of religions to the
productivity of their enterprises. 4) A family wakes up to find a gigantic apple in their dining room and must
decide what to do next. 5) A teacher reads a story for children to her students. But the story has a life of its own
and proves pitiless. 6) Two lovers are about to end their relationship because their marriage depends on a
temporary agreement that has just expired. 7) A seal kills a baby while reflecting on the sad situation of both
species.
4
SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA: The Plays and the Artists
Esteve Soler - Among his plays, the most notable are: Runes, published by the Institut del Teatre; Jo
sóc un altre!, premiered at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya and published by Proa; Davant de l’home,
dramatisation of Thomas Bernhard’s texts within the Teatre Lliure’s open rehearsal programme. His play Against
Progress was selected from among 646 plays to participate in the Stückenmarkt 2008 (Berlin Theatertreffen) and
was premiered in Santiago de Chile (Deusches shule), Barcelona (Sala Beckett), Munich (Bayerisches
Staatsschauspiel), Nordhausen (Theater Nordhausen), Pont-a-Mousson (in the Mousson d’ Été festival), Paris
(during the festival of belgian theatre), Athens (Synergío Theatre) and Biel-Solothurn (Theater Biel-Solothurn). The
play will be premiered soon in Brussels, Aachen and Caracas. He has also translated two plays by Sarah Kane:
4.48 Psychosis (premiered at the Sala Beckett) and Cleansed (premiered at the Teatre Estudi of the Institut del
Teatre). As a journalist, he reports on cinema for the newspaper Regió 7, and is a member of the writing team of
the theatre journal Pausa. He holds a degree in Direction and Dramaturgy from the Institut del Teatre de
Barcelona.
Hillary J. Gardner (Translator) is a Catalan translator whose work appeared most recently in “Poetàrium” (Institut
Ramon Llull, 2009). She studied English and Spanish literature at UC Berkeley and in Barcelona and is a
graduate of the UI Writers’ Workshop. Her theater credits include The Night Just Before the Forests for the
Koltès NY 2003 Festival.
Dan Safer (Director) & Witness Relocation (www.witnessrelocation.org) make dance and theater shows that have
performed across the US, in Southeast Asia and Europe. They recently did the English language premiere of
Toshiki Okada's Five Days In March, and are working on Heaven On Earth, a new play by Chuck Mee to premiere
at La MaMa in February 2012, and are, amongst other things, performing at Theater de Chaillot in Paris next
Spring. Dan is also choreographing Ridge Theater’s Persephone at BAM and teaches at NYU.
5