ON THE ROYAL ROAD, WORLD VOICES, Tadashi Suzuki and More Slated for Segal Center's 2017 Spring Season

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, located at The Graduate Center, CUNY, announces its Spring 2017 season of free public programs. The season features free public programs, welcoming and celebrating contemporary theatre and performing artists from around the world.

Highlights from the Segal Center's SPRING 2017 season of programs include:

- The third annual Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (March 2, 3 + 6).
Featuring over 40 films from five continents by experimental, emerging, and established theatre artists and filmmakers. www.theSegalCenter.org

- On the Royal Road: The Burgher King, by Elfriede Jelinek (March 27). This New York reading is the very first presentation of an abbreviated version of the play by Nobel Prize-winning writer Elfriede Jelinek prior to its world premiere production at the Hamburg Schauspielhaus in October 2017.

- World Voices: International Play Festival (May 1, 2, and 7). As part of the 2017 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, The Segal Center will showcase readings of plays by celebrated international playwrights: Patricia Cornelius (Australia); Mîrza Metîn (Turkey); Natal'ya Vorozhbit (Ukraine); Marcia Zanelatto (Curator), Jô Bilac, Daniela Pereira de Carvalho, and Joaquim Vicente (Brazil); Hakim Bah (Guinea); Sasha Marianna Salzmann (Germany); Rama Haydar (Syria); Bashar Murkus (Palestine); Eunsung Kim (South Korea). www.theSegalCenter.org www.PEN.org

- Arab Classic Plays (April 19). Readings of the work of three of the Arab world's most renowned playwrights: Yusuf Idris (Egypt), Issam Mahfouz (Lebanon) + Sa'dallah Wannous (Syria).

- Classix: A Reading Series Celebrating Classic Plays by Black Playwrights (May 22 +23). A two-day exhibition of rarely seen Black classic plays, curated by Awoye Timpo. Featuring plays by four extraordinary 20th century playwrights: Alice Childress, Kathleen Collins, Bill Gunn, and Ron Milner.

- Artist Talk with Tadashi Suzuki (May 30). The Segal Center welcomes legendary Japanese theatre artist Tadashi Suzuki on perhaps his last U.S. visit and his only public appearance in New York City.

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center is located at The Graduate Center, CUNY, 365 Fifth Avenue, at 34th Street. Subway: Herald Square, lines B, D, F, M, N, Q, R. Events are ALWAYS FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED. NO RESERVATIONS. Dates and times are listed below. All programs are subject to change. For updates, visit www.theSegalCenter.org.

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THE SEGAL CENTER SPRING 2017 SCHEDULE:

MARCH

THE SEGAL CENTER FILM FESTIVAL ON THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE

March 2, 3, and 6 (Thursday, Friday, and Monday)
All Day Screenings l Segal Theatre, Elebash Hall

Now in its third year, the Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) presents experimental, emerging, and established theatre artists and filmmakers from around the world: from the wild success of The Vagina Monologues in China (The VaChina Monologues); to a diverse group of South African actors who perform in war-torn regions of the world (A Snake Gives Birth to a Snake); to a theatrical walking tour of Beirut (Al Khandaq); among many others. The program includes a roster of more than 40 features, shorts, documentaries, advance screenings, meet-the-filmmaker Q&A sessions, and panels with leading international theatre artists from Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, The Netherlands, Russia, Slovenia, South Africa, Taiwan, Ukraine, The United Kingdom, and the United States. For full film list and schedule: www.theSegalCenter.org

POETRY AS REVOLT: SPOKEN WORD REFLECTIONS AFTER THE AGE OF OBAMA

Co-presented with the Nuyorican Poets Café.
March 13 (Monday) 6:30pm Readings + Discussion | Segal Theatre

NYC-based poets and spoken word artists and three speakers react to our drastically changed political landscape. Confirmed poets include Advocate of Wordz, Jennifer Falu, Shanelle Gabrielle, Jaime Lee Lewis,

Saroya Marsh, Pamela Sneed and others (TBC). Curated by Daniel Gallant/Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

CREATE NYC: A SYMPOSIUM AND TOWN HALL

March 22 (Wednesday) All Day l Proshansky Auditorium

The Segal Center is partnering with New York arts and culture organizations to host a day of outreach, engagement, and strategy towards the creation of a new cultural plan for New York.

The all-day symposium features morning breakout sessions around themes and ideas generated from a series of breakfasts and meetings between cultural workers and organizations over many months leading up to this event.

UN-BANNED: A DAY OF PHILOSOPHY, POETRY, POLITICS & THE ARTS

March 27 (Monday) All Day Open Forum l Segal Theatre

The Segal Center invites artists, philosophers, students, and faculty from the "Banned Seven": Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria to share their thoughts and reactions to the recent changes in U.S. immigration policy.

World Premiere Reading

ELFRIEDE JELINEK'S ON THE ROYAL ROAD: THE BURGHER KING

March 27 (Monday) 6:30pm Reading + Conversation

This unique performance text by 2004 Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek offers a provocative European perspective on Donald Trump's persona. The New York reading of On the Royal Road: The Burgher King at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center is the very first presentation of an abbreviated version of this play prior to its world premiere production at the Hamburg Schauspielhaus in October 2017. Translated by Gitta Honegger, directed by Stefan Dzeparoski.

APRIL

ARTIST TALK WITH PLAYWRIGHT Richard Maxwell

April 3 (Monday) 6:30pm Artist Talk + 2:00pm Screenings l Segal Theatre

An artist talk with Obie Award-winning playwright Richard Maxwell of New York City Players, including selected afternoon screenings of his work.

Richard Maxwell is a playwright, director, and the artistic director of New York City Players. He studied acting at Illinois State University and then became a co-founder of the Cook County Theater Department. He is a Doris Duke Performing Artist and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, two OBIE Awards, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, and was an invited artist in the Whitney Biennial. His latest book, Theater for Beginners, is published by TCG (2015). He directed Jackie Sibblies Drury's play, Really, for New York City Players (March 2016). Upcoming projects include The Evening Part 2 and Samara, directed by Sarah Benson with music by Steve Earle (April 4-May 7 at Soho Rep).

PS122: PAST AND FUTURE
with Vallejo Gantner, Mark Russell, AND JENNY SCHLENZKA

April 17 (Monday) 6:30pm Conversation l Segal Theatre

An evening with former and present Executive Artistic Directors of PS122: Vallejo Gantner, Mark Russell, and Jenny Schlenzka. They will discuss past, present, and future of PS122-one of the most influential theatre and performance spaces in the Americas. Performance Space 122 began in 1980, emerging from a city struggling with high rates of poverty, crime, racial strife, and drugs, as well as the deaths of many vital artists and thinkers caught up in the AIDS epidemic. Together with AIDS Service Center NYC, Mabou Mines, and Painting Space 122, PS122 transformed an abandoned public school in the heart of a low-rise immigrant neighborhood into a multi-use community and cultural center.

ARAB CLASSIC PLAYS:
Yusuf Idris (Egypt), Issam Mahfouz (Lebanon) + Sa'dallah Wannous (Syria)

April 19 (Wednesday) 2:00pm, 4:30pm, 6:30pm Readings + Discussion

Please join us as we expand our collective knowledge of the classical canon of Arab plays. Yusuf Idris (Egypt), Issam Mahfouz (Lebanon) and Sa'dallah Wannous (Syria) are some of the Arab world's most renowned playwrights, but are relatively unknown to the Western world. Their complex and nuanced plays address the timeless issues of power and politics in ways that deeply resonate with our own situation.
This event is curated by Joy Sarah Arab (Producer) in collaboration with Marvin Carlson; Salma S. Zohdi (Dramaturg).

REMEMBERING Dario Fo with Robert Brustein

April 24 (Monday) 6:30pm Conversation + 2:00pm Screenings l Segal Theatre

A day celebrating the legacy of Dario Fo (24 March 1926 - 13 October 2016), the Italian actor-playwright, comedian, singer, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter, painter, political campaigner for the Italian left-wing and the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature.

With Robert Brustein, 2011 National Medal for the Arts recipient, the legendary founder of the Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T) and Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

THE 2017 Edwin Booth AWARD: TAYLOR MAC

April 28 (Friday) 7:00pm l Proshansky Auditorium

An evening celebrating the groundbreaking work of Taylor Mac, American actor, playwright, performance artist, director, producer, and singer-songwriter. Taylor's 24-hour, 246-song marathon performance, A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, was hailed by Wesley Morris in the New York Times as "one of the greatest experiences of my life."

The Edwin Booth Award is given annually by the Doctoral Theatre Students' Association to honor a person, organization, or company for their outstanding contribution to the NYC theatre community, and to promote integration of professional and academic theatre. Past honorees include: The Royal Shakespeare Company ('83), Ellen Stewart ('84), Joseph Papp ('89), Arthur Miller ('92), Richard Foreman ('97), Tony Kushner ('02), Karen Finley ('08), The Living Theater ('09), Elevator Repair Service ('14) and Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir('16). The event will feature live performances and a conversation.

MAY

2017 PEN WORLD VOICES: INTERNATIONAL PLAY FESTIVAL

May 1, 2, and 7 (Monday, Tuesday, and Sunday) 4:00pm + 6:00pm + 8pm Readings

Segal Theatre + Nuyorican Poets Cafe

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center presents World Voices: International Play Festival 2017. As part of the 2017 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, the Segal Center will showcase play readings by nine of the world's most respected dramatists. With writers hailing from five different continents, the International Play Festival generates a conversation on art, politics, dreams, war, and philosophy, meant to give American audiences a rich awareness of the greater global dialogue. All readings are in English and will be followed by discussion with the playwright. The focus of the 2017 PEN World Voices Festival is the relationship between power and gender. www.worldvoices.pen.org

Monday, May 1 | Segal Theatre

4:00pm Shit. Written by Patricia Cornelius (Australia). Directed by Katie Pearl.

6:00pm Take out the Rubbish, Sasha. Written by Natal'ya Vorozhbit (Ukraine),
translated by Sasha Dugdale.

8:00pm Hungry Dogs. Written by Mîrza Metîn (Turkey), translated by Lucy Wood.
Directed by Dan Safer (NYC)

Tuesday, May 2 | Segal Theatre

4:00pm TranScenes: Four Short Plays from Brazil. Works by Marcia Zanelatto (Curator), Jô Bilac, Daniela Pereira de Carvalho, and Joaquim Vicente. Translated by Emily Walsh.

6:00pm Ticha-Ticha. Written by Hakim Bah (Guinea), translated by Heather Denyer.

Directed by Ethan McSweeney.

8:00pm Meteorites. Written by Sasha Marianna Salzmann (Germany), translated by Jenny Piening

Directed by Mallory Catlett.

Sunday, May 7 | Nuyorican Poets Cafe (236 E 3rd Street, Second Avenue/F Train)

4:00pm Desert of Light. Written by Rama Haydar (Syria).
Translated by Rama Haydar & Rebekah Maggor. Directed by Rebekah Maggor.

6:00pm Parallel Time. Written by Bashar Murkus (Palestine), translated by Rebekah Maggor.

Directed by Rebekah Maggor.

8:00pm Sister Mok-Rahn. Written by Eunsung Kim (South Korea), translated by Dayoung Jeong.

Directed by Seonjae Kim.

ANDRZEJ WIRTH: A CENTURY IN THE LANDSCAPE OF THEATRE

May 10 (Monday) 6:30pm Conversation

+ 4:00pm Screening of Theatre Without Audience by Pawel Kocambasi, 2014, Poland.

www.knudsenstreuber.com

An evening with Andrzej Wirth, the legendary philosopher of theatre and founder of the 'Applied Theater Studies' in Giessen (Germany). The conversation will focus on Wirth's biography, Flucht Nach Vorn (Fleeing Forward) by theatre critic Thomas Irmer, published in Germany by Spector Verlag, Leipzig (Polish translation in 2016 by Theater Institute, Warsaw). In the afternoon The Segal Center will screen the 2014 biographical documentary film on Wirth entitled Theatre Without Audience by Pawel Kocambasi.

APPROACHING DANCE:
TRANSDISCIPLINARY METHODOLOGIES AND MODALITIES OF THE MOVING BODY IN PERFORMANCE

The Doctoral Theatre Students' Association 2017 Conference.

May 11 (Thursday) All Day, 2:00pm + 6:30pm

An interdisciplinary conference organized by the Doctoral Theatre Students' Association (DTSA) interrogating dance scholarship and methodologies. Student presentations of selected papers and faculty presentations by Thomas DeFrantz (Duke), Nadine George-Graves (University of California, San Diego), André Lepecki (New York University), Erika T. Lin (The Graduate Center, CUNY), VK Preston (University of Toronto), Katherine Profeta (Queens College, CUNY), Paul Scolieri (Barnard), and others.

The evening program will feature panel discussions, short presentations and a performance by The Bureau for the Future of Choreography.

50 YEARS OF THEATRE OF THE RIDICULOUS

May 15 (Monday) 6:30pm + 5:00pm Screening

50 years ago in New York City, the Theatre of the Ridiculous movement as a theatrical genre started in in 1965 with The Play-House of the Ridiculous, the spin-off group The Ridiculous Theatrical Company formed in 1967. The Theatre of the Ridiculous made a break with the dominant trends in theatre of naturalistic acting and realistic settings and brought elements of queer/camp performance to avant-garde theatre.

With original Theatre of the Ridiculous company members Everett Quinton, Beth Dodye Bass, Brian Belovitch, Black-Eyed Susan, Julia Campanelli, Eureka, Jim Freeman, Matt Luceno, Chris Johnson,

Lenys Sama, Kevin Scullin, Jenne Vath, and others.

DRAMATURGY IN THE MAKING
with KATALIN TRENCSÉNYI, PETER ECKERSALL, and BERTIE FERDMAN

May 18 (Thursday) 6:30pm l Segal Theatre

An evening celebrating the new publication Dramaturgy in the Making: A User's Guide for Theatre Practitioners by Katalin Trencsényi, published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama in 2015. Trencsényi's research maps contemporary dramaturgical practices in various settings of theatre-making and dance to reveal the different ways that dramaturgs work today. It provides a thorough survey of three major areas of practice-institutional dramaturgy, production dramaturgy and dance dramaturgy-with each illustrated through a range of case studies that illuminate methodology and which will assist practitioners in developing their own "dramaturgical toolbox."

CLASSIX: A READING SERIES CELEBRATING CLASSIC PLAYS BY BLACK PLAYWRIGHTS

May 22 and 23 (Monday + Tuesday) 4:30PM + 6:30pm Readings l Segal Theatre

Please join us as we expand our collective knowledge of the classical canon with an exceptional group directors and actors for this unique series-curated by Awoye Timpo as "an exhibition of rarely seen Black classic plays." Play readings are followed in the evening by a discussion with the theatre artists involved. Alice Childress, Kathleen Collins, Bill Gunn, and Ron Milner are just four out of an eclectic group of Black playwrights of the 20th century. This series celebrates classic plays that feature dynamic characters, extraordinary dialogue, and compelling stories that speak to their own time in a way that deeply resonates with our own.

ARTIST TALK WITH TADASHI SUZUKI

May 30 (Tuesday) 12:00 Artist Talk with Tadashi Suzuki & Kameron Steele, with Frank Hentschker

+ 11:30am, 2:00pm, 2:15pm, 3:45pm Screenings l Segal Theatre

The Segal Center welcomes legendary Japanese theatre artist Tadashi Suzuki on his perhaps last visit to the United States. Suzuki (born 1939 in Shimizu) is a theatre director, writer, and philosopher working out of Toga, Toyama, Japan. He is the founder and director of the Suzuki Company of Toga (SCOT), organizer of Japan's first international theatre festival (Toga Festival). With director Anne Bogart, he co-founded the Saratoga International Theatre Institute in Saratoga Springs, New York. He is the creator of the Suzuki Method of Actor Training. In conversation with Kameron Steele (editor and translator of Tadashi Suzuki's Culture Is the Body) and Frank Hentschker.

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Originally founded in 1979 as the Center for Advanced Studies in Theatre Arts (CASTA), The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center was renamed in March of 1999 to recognize Martin E. Segal, one of New York City's outstanding leaders of the arts. The Segal Center curates over thirty events throughout the Spring and Fall academic seasons, all free and open to the public. Dedicated to bridging the gap between the professional and academic theatre communities, the Segal Center presents readings, performance, lectures, and artists and academics in conversation. In addition, the Segal Center presents three annual festivals (PRELUDE, PEN World Voices: International Pay Festival, and The Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance) and publishes and maintains three open access online journals (Arab Stages, European Stages, and The Journal of American Drama and Theatre). The Segal Center also publishes many volumes of plays in translation and is the leading publisher of plays from the Arab world. The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (MESTC) is a vital component of the Theatre Program's academic culture and creating in close collaboration a research nexus, focusing on dramaturgy, new media, and global theatre. Faculty members and students are involved in many of its activities: its Executive Director is a central faculty member. Each semester the Segal provides institutional support to often more than 10 visiting scholars from around the world. Doctoral candidates and field leaders, these visiting scholars often become part of the global fabric of the Segal Center, contributing to the Center's live programming, live streaming, online presence, and printed materials through their scholarship and ideas. The Segal Center provides an intimate platform where both artists and theatre professionals can actively participate with audiences to advance awareness and appreciation. www.thesegalcenter.org.

THE GRADUATE CENTER, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, of which the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center is an integral part, is the doctorate-granting institution of The City University of New York (CUNY). An internationally recognized center for advanced studies and a national model for public doctoral education, the school offers more than thirty doctoral programs, as well as a number of master's programs. Many of its faculty members are among the world's leading scholars in their respective fields, and its alumni hold major positions in industry and government, as well as in academia. The Graduate Center is also home to twenty-eight interdisciplinary research centers and institutes focused on areas of compelling social, civic, cultural, and scientific concerns. Located in a landmark Fifth Avenue building, The Graduate Center has become a vital part of New York City's intellectual and cultural life with its extensive array of public lectures, exhibitions, concerts, and theatrical events. www.gc.cuny.edu.