The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) will present a free event, "An Evening with The Talking Band" on Tuesday, October 14 at 6:30pm. The evening features Paul Zimet and Ellen Maddow of The Talking Band discussing their work and current production, FLIP SIDE. In this unconventional collaboration, Hungarian-born designer Anna Kiraly produced set designs that were then used as inspiration for text by playwright Ellen Maddow and music by composer "Blue" Gene Tyranny. FLIP SIDE is a comedy of longing, misperceptions, and mismatches, in which two sets of characters occupy two different worlds. NYTheatre.com wrote, "Flip Side is a whimsical, wise, theatrical meditation … full of surprises and … profound and gloriously elegant poetry."
The Talking Band creates a poetic-political theater - political in that it reflects the condition of people in our time, and poetic because of the language, music and visual imagery. These elements are used to create richly textured works which seek to illuminate the extraordinary dimensions of ordinary life.
Ellen Maddow is a founding member of The Talking Band. Works that she has written include Flip Side, Delicious Rivers, Painted Snake in a Painted Chair (2003 OBIE Award) and the text and music for five pieces about the avant-garde housewife, Betty Suffer. Ellen was a member of the Open Theater. She is a recipient of the 2007 NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights, and a member of New Dramatists.
Paul Zimet is the Artistic Director of The Talking Band. He has written Imminence, Party Time, Belize, The Parrot, Star Messengers, Bitterroot, Black Milk Quartet, New Cities, and two episodes of The Necklace. He received a Village Voice OBIE award for his direction of The Talking Band production of Painted Snake in a Painted Chair, and also three OBIE awards for his work with the Open Theater and the Winter Project, both directed by Joseph Chaikin.
The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (MESTC), The Graduate Center, CUNY, is a non-profit center for theatre, dance, and film affiliated with CUNY's Ph.D. Program in Theatre. Originally founded in 1979 as the Center for Advanced Studies in Theatre Arts (CASTA), it was renamed in March of 1999 in recognition of one of New York City's outstanding leaders of the arts. The Center's primary focus is to bridge the gap between the academic and professional performing arts communities by providing an open environment for the development of educational, community-driven, and professional projects in the performing arts. As a result, MESTC is home to theatre scholars, students, playwrights, actors, dancers, directors, dramaturgs, and performing arts managers, as well as both the local and international theatre communities. The Center presents staged readings to further the development of new and classic plays, lecture series, televised seminars featuring professional and academic luminaries, and arts in education programs, and maintains its long-standing visiting-scholars-from-abroad program. In addition, the Center publishes a series of highly regarded academic journals, as well as books, including plays in translation, all written and edited by renowned scholars.
The Martin E. Segal Theatre is located at 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street in New York City.
For more information, visit http://web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc.
Photo credit: Jon Crispin
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