Playwright Domnica Radulescu Set for EXILE IS MY HOME Talkback at Theater For The New City, 5/21

Theater For The New City is pleased to announce a special talkback with internationally renowned author Domnica Radulescu and director Andreas Robertz, following the Saturday, May 21, 8:00 pm performance of Exile Is My Home. Told as a sci-fi, post-apocalyptic fairy tale, Exile Is My Home is the haunting story of Mina and Lina, a refugee couple from the Balkans traveling through the galaxy in search of a planet to call home. The play combines absurdist comedy, irony and suspense to raise consciousness about the current international refugee crisis and the complexity of issues related to it. The story emerged partly from Radulescu's own experience as a political refugee from the former communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu and other accounts of displacement. As millions of people are uprooted from their homes and swept across tumultuous seas and often unwelcome lands, Exile Is My Home highlights the importance of immigrant theater in bringing awareness about many of the challenges facing our world today.

Exile Is My Home will also include original music and sound by experimental electronic musician Alexander Tanson. Tanson's score for the play moves between ambient soundscapes, spacey melodies, and a variety of other mind-bending sounds.

Exile Is My Home runs through Sunday, May 22nd. Tickets are $18.00 and can be purchased at SmartTix, www.smarttix.com, or by phone at 212-868-4444. Reservations can also be accepted by calling Theater For The New City at 212-254-1109. Theater For The New City is located at 155 First Avenue in New York City.

The cast of Exile Is My Home will feature Mario Golden, Vivienne Jurado, A.B. Lugo, Mizan Kirby-Nunes, Noemi de La Puente*, Mirandy Rodriguez and David van Leesten. The production will be directed by Andreas Robertz, with Set Design by Jon Collins, Costume Design by Nicole Slaven, Lighting Design by Joseph Thompson and Art Work by Traci Mierzwa. *appears courtesy of Actors' Equity Association

Domnica Radulescu is the author of two internationally acclaimed novels: Train to Trieste, which was translated into thirteen languages and won the 2009 Library of Virginia Best Fiction award, and Black Sea Twilight. Her third novel, Country of Red Azaleas will be published on April 5th of this year. Trained as an actor in a Grotowski style theater while living in her native Romania in the eighties, Radulescu has been actively engaged in the theater for several decades as director, teacher, scholar and playwright. She has directed plays by Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Fernando Arrabal, and Franca Rame at universities in the United States, the International Theater Festival in Avignon, and the National Theater in Cluj, Romania.

Two of her most recent plays The Town with Very Nice People and Exile Is My Home have received second prize and honorable mention respectively, from the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award.

She is the author of critically acclaimed books on theater and performance, such as Women's Comedic Art as Social Revolution (2012) and Theater of War and Exile (2015) and the winner of the 2011 Outstanding Faculty Award for the state of Virginia and a Fulbright scholar. Radulescu escaped her native Romania and settled in the United States as a political refugee in 1983. She holds a PhD in French and Italian literatures from the University of Chicago and is a distinguished Professor of Romance Languages at Washington and Lee University in Virginia.

Andreas Robertz (Director) is an established German theater director. He has received numerous regional and national awards and nominations in Germany for his outstanding work as director. Since 2006 he lives and works in New York City. Andreas is Artistic Director of OneHeart Productions and a freelance director and producer working in both countries. In New York he has directed for the Immigrant Theatre Project, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, Around the Block, OneHeart Productions, and at Theatre for the New City and the Martin E. Segal Theatre (CUNY). In 2012 he became Co-Director of the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater Playwrights' Unit. He developed and co-directed "Birmingham Reunion" as part of OneHeart's Slavery Project on the legacy of the slave trade, based on biographical material from descendants of slaves and slave owners. Directing credits include the Premiere of Richard Ploetz' "Deceit" and Christy Smith-Lohman's "Negative is Positive." He also co-directed the World Premiere of Nancy Ferragallo's "Charlotte Song" at Theater for the New City. Most recently he directed Mario Golden's "The Love of Brothers" in Spanish at El Centro Cultural de la Diversidad in Mexico City to critical acclaim. Andreas is member of the international Lincoln Theatre Director's Lab network.