FIAF and Baryshnikov Arts Center to Present the US Premiere of COMA, 10/24

Renowned French actor and director Patrice Chéreau will perform a staged reading of Pierre Guyotat's highly lauded work Coma in its U.S. Premiere on Wednesday, October 24 at 8pm. Presented by the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), New York's premiere French cultural center, and Baryshnikov Arts Center, Coma is directed by Thierry Thieû Niang, and will be performed in French with English supertitles at FIAF's Florence Gould Hall.

Winner of the prestigious literary award Prix Décembre in 2006, Coma is a deeply moving, vivid portrayal of the author's artistic and spiritual crisis in the 1980s when he reached the physical limits of his search for a new language, entered a mental clinic, and fell into a coma. A poetic, cruelly lucid account, Coma links Guyotat's illness and loss of subjectivity with a broader concern for the slow, progressive regeneration of humanity. Written in what the author himself has called a "normalized writing," the book is grounded in experiences from the author's childhood and his family's role in the French Resistance.