Theatre Tas Presents THE LAST STORY, 3/2-12

Theater TAS presents the American premiere of The Last Story, written and directed by celebrated playwright Kaca Celan. In this award-winning drama about the "last" Adam and Eve, Celan illustrates the never-ending and unavailing quest for paradisiacal harmony between a man and a woman.

The Last Story will be presented Wednesday-Saturday, March 2-5 and March 9-12, 2011, 7:00pm at HERE, located at 145 Sixth Avenue, (one block south of Spring Street), NYC. Press is invited to the opening Wednesday, March 2, 7:00pm and after. For tickets visit here.org or call 212.352.3101.

In a powerful verbal war between The Woman (Tajna Tanovic) and The Man (Scott Wallace)-a couple on the verge of a break-up-phrases filled with heavy emotion explode while a striking parable of the battle of the sexes develops. Both, fighting like a lion and lioness, are caught in a cage called marriage. The Last Story is a postmodern European version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

"The Last Story is the first play I've written while in exile in Germany," says Celan. "While others were writing about the war in former Yugoslavia, I was writing about the war of the sexes. Having lost my home, family and friends, I was only left to the company of literary ancestors. Their traces are very apparent in the play: Albee's Martha turns into Euripides' Medea, the Man's gigantic Ionescoesque monologue is actually a Hamlet "Mousetrap", Beckett's distanced longing for friendship as the highest form of love is omnipresent. The story about the archetypal misunderstanding between Adam and Eve is realistic-the way it is presented maintains a deep loyalty towards the European drama tradition with Edward Albee upfront."

"A sensitive poet, alert observer and astute analyst ...", (Margret Hanuschkin, journalist), Kaca Celan was born in Vojvodina, former Yugoslavia. She moved to Sarajevo, her city of choice, at age 19. In the early 90's, as the third Balkan war was knocking at the doors of her city, Celan left, three days before the siege started, and made her way to Slovenia. In 1993, with the help of the Slovenian PEN, she went to Germany following an invitation from the Böll Foundation, established by and named after German writer and Nobel-Prize winner, Heinrich Böll. She resided in Germany for 14 years before moving to New York in 2007.

Celan is a renowned and award-winning writer, director and performer with 30 years of working experience in theaters across Yugoslavia, Slovenia, Russia, Austria and Germany. She founded Theater TAS in Sarajevo in 1984 to promote new theater genres. TAS was re-established in 1993 in Germany and was active at Burgau Castle from 1999 until Celan's arrival to New York in 2007.

Celan has written 12 plays and directed over 40 productions. The Last Story received the Artist Award of the Cultural Minister of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany in 1997. Celan is internationally known for being awarded the first prize for the best German-language play from the Theatergemeinde Deutschland (German Theater Community) for her play Heimatbuch in 1995. "If something like European identity really exists- Kaca Celan's Heimatbuch seems to me to be a proof of that," said Dr. Manfred Beilharz, former President of the ITI InterNational Theatre Institute.

Other awards include: Best Young Actress in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1983), the Yugoslavian Award for Avant-Garde Arts, (Zagreb, 1983), Best Director Award, Avant-Garde Theater Festival (Kotor Montenegro, 1985), Kristal Vilenice, International Literature Award for Poetry (Slovenia, 1996).

For more information about Theater TAS, visit www.theatertas.com or email info@theatertas.com.

This production is being presented through HEREstay, HERE's curated rental program, which provides artists with subsidized space and equipment, as well as technical and administrative support.

 

To post a comment, you must register and login.