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RUSSIAN PLAYWRIGHTS in Residence in PRINCETON and NEW YORK
April 6, 2009
For Immediate Release
Cassandra Hartblay
CEC ArtsLink
(212) 643-1985 x17
chartblay@cecartslink.org
Mikhail Durnenkov’s play, KHLAM!, or JUNK!, takes place in a bargain store. As members of the cast pause for a moment from their bargain hunting, the audience learns, bit by bit, the various paths that have brought each individual to the current moment.
Durnenkov, a rising star in Russian playwriting, will be one of four Russian play- and screen- writers in New York this April as part of a residency program hosted by CEC ArtsLink and Princeton University.
While in New York, Durnenkov and three others (Aleksandr Arkhipov, Ksenya Stepanycheva, and Aleksandr Rodionov, whose screenplay was the basis for the short film Everybody Dies But Me, an award winner at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival) will present new English translations of scenes from their work in a staged reading at The Living Theatre on Tuesday, April 21st at 8pm (event details). This will be the first presentation of their work in the United States.
Durnenkov’s JUNK! was produced most recently as part of the Golden Mask Festival in Moscow. The Drunks, a new script co-written by Durnenkov and his brother Vyacheslav, will premiere in August 2009 at the Courtyard Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. The production will kick-off a Royal Shakespeare Company series called “Other Russia,” featuring four specially commissioned works by Russian playwrights.
Even the most devoted of New York theater-goers would be hard-pressed to name a Russian playwright other than Anton Chekov. Sergeui Oushakine, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton, and the playwright’s host during their time there, highlights this gap.
“Theatre and Drama are generally underrepresented in the Slavic curriculum in the United States. We know the poetry and the fiction that has come out of Russia in the past fifty years, but, partly because dramatic work has largely gone untranslated, Slavic scholars are familiar with Chekov and other 19th century playwrights, but with nothing contemporary. Which is really a shame because theater is such a booming cultural field in Russia today. So hopefully with this exchange we will start to fill in that gap.”
Through this residency, Princeton’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures asserts a growing focus on performing arts, part of an institution-wide push in line with the building of Princeton’s new Lewis Center for Performing Arts.
The writers’ residency in Princeton is structured to allow them to engage with Theatre professionals and with students and faculty interested in contemporary Russian culture. On Monday, April 13th, at 4:30pm the group will present a Dramatic Russia: A Master Class open to the Princeton community. On Thursday, April 16th at 4:30pm the writers will hold a Roundtable Conversation highlighting themes in contemporary Russian theatre.
The writers’ visit is a part of the Open World Cultural Leaders Program, supported by the Open World Leadership Center at the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Arts, and is designed to encourage cross-cultural communication through the arts between the United States and Russia. The residency is administered and organized by CEC ArtsLink, a New York City-based nonprofit organization.
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CEC ArtsLink's programs offer support, residencies, workshops and professional exchanges to contemporary artists and arts managers of all genres in the US, Eastern and Central Europe, Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Working with artists, arts organizations and community-based groups, CEC ArtsLink provides an essential structure for ongoing dialogue, contributing to a culture of openness and trust between nations.
Open World’s Cultural Leaders Program aims to forge better understanding between the United States and Russia by enabling emerging Russian leaders in the arts to experience America’s cultural and community life, and to work with their American counterparts. Support for the cultural program is provided through partnership and funding from the National Endowment for the Arts; the Open World Leadership Center funds the administrative portion of the program.
Open World is a unique, nonpartisan initiative of the U.S. Congress. Delegates range from judges to mayors, from innovative nonprofit directors to experienced journalists, and from political party activists to regional administrators. Over 13,000 Open World participants have been hosted in all 50 U.S. states since the program’s inception in 1999.
For more information and to arrange interviews with the Russian writers during their stay, please contact Cassandra Hartblay, at chartblay@cecartslink.org.
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