Spend An Evening With Rwandan Director Dorcy Rugamba On 2/2

Take a look inside Urwintore theatre company's world-renowned production of Peter Weiss's The Investigation, directed by Dorcy Rugamba, Monday Feb 2 at 6:30 pm. The Investigation is a compelling reconstruction of the Frankfurt war crimes trials concerning the role of German citizens in the atrocities of Auschwitz. Performed in Kinyarwanda (with English subtitles), Weiss's 1965 play about the German Holocaust takes on universal power as it becomes a conceit for the horrifying genocide that destroyed Rwanda in 1994. Presented with the support of Peak Performances@Montclair State University (www.peakperfs.org). Full production at MSU's Alexander Kasser Theater February 5-8, 2009.

Martin E. Segal Theatre, Graduate Center, CUNY, 365 Fifth Ave at 34th St. Free! First come, first served

Presented by The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, The Graduate Center, CUNY, Peak Performances at Montclair State University, & Urwintore.

Dorcy Rugamba is an author, actor, and director, as well as a dancer trained in traditional Intore dance. Rugamba left Rwanda on April 21, 1994, one week after members of his family were killed during the Batutsi genocide. Settling in Brussels, he studied at Belgium's Conservatoire Royal du Musique de Liege and in 1999 co-authored Rwanda 94, first performed at the Festival d'Avignon by the Belgian company Groupov. Other works include the play Bloody Niggars! and Marembo, an account of his family's last days in Rwanda.

Urwintore was founded by Dorcy Rugamba in 2001 as a workshop for creation and research in the performing arts. Urwintore's production of The Investigation was developed in 2005 and has been performed in Butare and Kigali, Rwanda, and at the Festival Emulation, Liege; the Théâtre des bouffes du Nord, Paris; and at the Culture Center of Ans, Belgium. The company members are all survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

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. http://web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc