This weekend, Origin Theatre Company, the city's only theatre company devoted to introducing New York audiences to an illuminating spectrum of new theatre voices from across Europe, presents "Re-Building the Balkans," a two-day mini festival on contemporary Balkan culture. Coordinated with the NY Public Library for the Performing Arts, the two-day snapshot unfolds at the Bruno Walter Auditorium, 111 Amsterdam Avenue, today, February 7 and Monday, February 9. All events are free to the public.
Among the offerings are a reading of the play "Control," by Croatian playwright Marjan Alcevki (Saturday February 7 at 1:30pm), and a screening of "Mothers" by the Oscar-nominated director from Macedonia, Milcho Manchevski (Monday February 9 at 6pm).
Alcevki's play, about a psychological experiment gone wrong at a university in Zagreb, was a 2012 finalist for the BBC International Radio Award.
Manchevski's iconoclastic feature "Mothers" captures the heartbreaking state of contemporary Macedonia through the eyes of several mothers who are everything from dedicated, neglectful, loving and absent. Manchevski's "Before the Rain" won the Golden Lion at Venice as well as earning a best foreign film Oscar nomination. Based in New York, Manchevski, who has published books of fiction, essays and on his photography, as well as directed an episode of The Wire, takes part in a Q&A following the screening.
According to Matthew Torney, Origin's director of programming, "in this specially curated program of theatre and film, we present a range of work from different voices that examine the issues of rebuilding after war, and looking to the future. The unique historical context and many conflicts in the region have created a hugely fertile environment for artists."
A panel discussion on Saturday February 7 at 3pm, examines the pressures of making art in the complex environment of Southeastern Europe. Led by Professor Larry Wolff, the Silver Professor of History and the director of the Department of European and Mediterranean Studies at NYU, the panel includes
Tea Alagic (a theater director and writer from Bosnia), and Aisling Reidy (the senior legal advisor for Human Rights Watch, and a former prosecuting attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia).
All events are free and open to the public, on a first-come-first-serve basis. For additional information e-mail
info@origintheatre.org
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