PlayCo Presents Human Rights Roundtable with VILLA Playwright/Director Guillermo Calderon

The Play Company (PlayCo) will present a conversation on human rights and how lessons from the past inform contemporary movements for social justice. The conversation is presented as part of PlayCo's Idea Lab program, in collaboration with the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, the Historical Memory Project, the CCNY Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Center for Worker Education, and the Museum of Chinese in America. The conversation will be held on February 9 from 7 - 9pm at CCNY's Center for Worker Education, 25 Broadway, 7th floor, NYC. This event is free and open to the public, but a photo ID is required for entry.

A Conversation on Human Rights: Making Historical Memory into Present Action is presented in anticipation of PlayCo's U.S. English language premiere of Villa, written and directed by Chile's preeminent contemporary writer/director Guillermo Calderón. Villa focuses on the demolished site of the Villa Grimaldi, an infamous detention camp located just outside Santiago, Chile. In Villa, three women have been tasked with deciding the fate of the historical site, where about 4,500 people were held during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship during the late 1970s. Villa presents thought-provoking questions surrounding remembrance and renewal and how communities might utilize a painful collective memory to move forward as a country.

Preceding the conversation, actors Crystal Finn, Vivia Font, and Harmony Stempel will present a reading of select scenes from Villa. Calderón will then be joined by Kate Loewald (Founding Producer, PlayCo), Elizabeth Silkes (Executive Director, ICSC), Marcia Esparza (Founder and Director, HMP), and Danielle Zach (Acting Director, Human Rights Studies at CCNY) for a dynamic conversation moderated by Nancy Yao Maasbach (President, MOCA).

Kate Loewald, Founding Producer at The Play Company said, "We are looking forward to sharing this powerful play with New Yorkers. We hope it will not only connect our community with compelling human stories from Chile's past, but also spark connections with contemporary struggles here in the U.S. to address painful, unresolved history in order to move forward as a more just and equal society. We're honored to be working with these partner organizations and bring them together with Guillermo Calderon for a conversation about how historical memory shapes our future."

Marcia Esparza, Founder and Director of the Historical Memory Project shared, "This timely showing of Villa is a poignant reminder of the long-term legacies of authoritarian regimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by rightwing militaries in Latin America. Villa, a torture center in the outskirts of Santiago, Chile, draws our attention to current generations' duty to remember the past, to honor victims and to take action against those very same socio-economic, political and cultural conditions that paved the way for the rise of fascism in the region. A must see for the Latin American diasporic community promoting historical memory in NYC."

The Play Company will present Villa from March 1 to April 1 at The Wild Project (195 East 3rd Street, Manhattan). Tickets are on sale now. For more information, visit playco.org.

About the Artists

Guillermo Calderón is a playwright and director based in New York. He graduated with a degree in Arts specializing in Acting from the Universidad de Chile and studied abroad graduating from the Della'Arte School of Physical Theater in California, USA. He also has a Master of Liberal Arts with a specialization in Film, from the City University of New York.

His first play as a writer & director was Neva, which won multiple awards including: Best Play of the year in 2006 by the Art Critics Circle of Chile, three Altazor Awards in 2007 and the 2008 Jose Nuez Martin Award. In 2008, he debuted Clase, which also won Best Play of the Year (Art Critics Circle of Chile) and was nominated as Best Playwright for the Atazor Awards. In 2008 he wrote and directed December, which won the 2010 Bank of Scotland Angel Award (Edinburgh International Festival). His recent plays include the duo ofVilla and Speech, which premiered in Chile at the international festival Santiago A Mil, and then went on to run at the Memory Museum in Santiago. He recently worked on the screenplay for Violeta (se fue a los cielos), Chile's 2012 entry for the Oscar Awards in the Foreign Film category.

Mr. Calderón's plays have extensively toured the world, including Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Canada, Portugal, Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, England and of course, Chile. Festival stops have included The Buenos Aires International Theatre Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, Seoul Performing Arts Festival, Chekhov Festival in Moscow, Iberoamerica Theatre Festival in Spain, TeatroStageFest, Vienna Theatre Festival, World Theatre Festival in Brussels, The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival, and RADAR L.A., accompanied by the 2011 TCG conference.

Crystal Finn's New York Credits include Kingdom Come (Roundabout), Pocatello, Antlia Pneumatica (Playwrights Horizons), 16 Words or Less, La Brea, Luther, Five Genocides (Clubbed Thumb), Summer Shorts (59E59), Bird in the Hand (Fulcrum). Regional: Cleveland Playhouse, Two River, Trinity Rep, George Street, Dorset Theater. She received her MFA from Brown/Trinity, and her BA from UC Berkeley. She is an affiliated artist with Clubbed Thumb Theater.

Vivia Font's New York Credits include Underneathmybed (Rattlestick),Menders (Gym at Judson), The Collected Wks Billy the Kid (Columbia Stages), The Hummingbird Song (Rep Espanol/INTAR, La Tempestad (Ohio Theatre) Goethe's Faust(Blue Heron Arts Center). Film and TV Credits include Rutherford State Park,

Money, Success, Fame..., One Life to Live, Sarbanes Oxley, This is Not My Beautiful Life.

Harmony Stempel has just graduated from the two year conservatory program at the Maggie Flanigan Studio. Over the past decade, Stempel has been active in various theatre and film projects throughout New York City, the northeastern US and abroad. Her work has been seen at The Barrow Group Theater, Theater for the New City, Center Stages, Ars Nova, The New Ohio Theater with terraNOVA Collective's soloNOVA Arts Festival, The New York International Fringe Festival, Baruch College, Yale University, The Philadelphia Fringe Festival and theaters in Prague, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and throughout New Zealand.

About The Play Company (PlayCo)

The Play Company is an OBIE Award-winning Off Broadway theater Production Company. PlayCo has produced 31 new plays from the United States, Germany, Romania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Japan, India, Mexico, France, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England. Their most recent production is the acclaimed New York premiere of Caught written by Christopher Chen and directed by Lee Sunday Evans. PlayCo develops and produces adventurous new plays from the U.S. and around the world, advancing a dynamic global practice of contemporary theater and expanding the American theater repertoire.

As the only New York company regularly producing outstanding contemporary plays from around the world alongside new American work, PlayCo's distinctive international programming links American theatre with world theater, American artists with the global creative community, and American audiences with a whole world of plays.

About the Collaborators

International Coalition of Sites of Conscience is a global network of historic sites, museums and memory initiatives connecting past struggles to today's movements for human rights and social justice. We help sites around the world better engage their communities through grants, networking and training.

Historical Memory Project at John Jay maintains that the recovery of historical memory is apart of the antidote to historical injustices. Through active recovery of historical memory and records from their base in NYC, HMP is committed to cultivating historical memory of the forcibly disappeared, the tortured, the massacred, the victims of sexual violence, and those whose human rights were violated by planned and coordinated actions. They are also committed to teaching and raising awareness of massatrocities and state violence in the public university and grassroots communities of New York City, with the goal of shaping a new generation of memory defenders, promoters, and human rights archivists, seeking truth, justice, and critical human rights.

City College of New York's Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the Center for Worker Education (CWE) serves a population that would be otherwise underserved by the college, and its courses and educational programs are specifically designed for students whose access to higher education may have been limited or interrupted due to financial limitations, work responsibilities, and family obligations. A spirit of open inquiry, curricular innovation, and academic integrity are linchpins of the CWE mission. Equally important are respect for diversity among faculty, staff and students, and a continuous search for our common ground as learners, teachers, and scholars. In providing its program, CWE seeks mutually beneficial relationships with labor unions, community-based organizations, city agencies, and employers in both the non-profit and private sectors who share our educational mission. With a dual focus on excellence and access, and by reaching out to the community, CWE aims to be a positive force in lower Manhattan and in the New York metropolitan area.

Museum of Chinese in America is dedicated to preserving and presenting the history, heritage, culture and diverse experiences of people of Chinese descent in the United States. The Museum promotes dialogue and understanding among people of all cultural backgrounds, bringing 160 years of Chinese American history to vivid life through its innovative exhibitions, educational and cultural programs. Through their initiatives, MOCA hopes to increase the visibility of the myriad voices and identities that make up Chinese American history, while increasing local and global dialogue. By understanding and documenting what is happening today, we strive to shape tomorrow.