Journalist Kara Swisher To Moderate Privacy Law Panel at Arena Stage

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater will host a pre-show discussion panel on privacy law on October 17, 2019 from 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. in the Molly Smith Study, with a reception from 6 - 6:30 p.m. This event is in conjunction with Arena's world-premiere play, Right to be Forgotten, which deals with themes surrounding free speech, privacy and the Internet.The panel will be moderated by Kara Swisher, co-founder and editor-at-large of Recode and contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. Panelists include playwright Sharyn Rothstein (Arena's Right to be Forgotten, USA Network's "Suits") and a variety of experts on the subject matter. Additional panelists will be announced at a later date. This event is free and open to the public. RSVPs are encouraged by visiting here; however, walk-ups are welcome.

Right to be Forgotten centers around a young man's mistake that haunts him online a decade later. Desperate for a normal life, he goes to extraordinary lengths to cut himself off from his past. In a time when everyone has their own version of the truth and their own way of spreading it, who decides which truths get buried and which live online forever? Directed by Deputy Artistic Director Seema Sueko, Right to be Forgotten runs October 11 - November 10, 2019 in the Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle.

Kara Swisher (Journalist) is the co-founder and editor-at-large of Recode, producer and host of the Recode Decode and Pivot podcasts, and co-executive producer of the Code Conference series. She is a New York Times contributing opinion writer and a contributor to NBC, CNBC and MSNBC. Swisher co-founded Recode and, before that, co-produced and co-hosted The Wall Street Journal's "D: All Things Digital" conference series with Walt Mossberg starting in 2003. It was, and still is, the country's premier conference on tech and media, with interviewees such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, the Google leadership, Tim Cook, Jack Dorsey and many other leading players. She and Mossberg were also the co-executive editors of a tech and media Web site, AllThingsD.com, founded in 2007. Swisher worked in The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau. For many years, she wrote the column "BoomTown," which appeared on the front page of the Marketplace section and online at WSJ.com. Previously, Swisher covered breaking news about the Web's major players, Internet policy issues and also wrote feature articles on technology for the paper. Earlier in her career, Swisher worked as a reporter at the Washington Post and as an editor at the City Paper of Washington, D.C. She received her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and her graduate degree at Columbia University's School of Journalism. Swisher is also the author of "aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads and Made Millions in the War for the Web," published by Times Business Books in July 1998. The sequel, "There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future," was published in the fall of 2003 by Crown Business Books.

Sharyn Rothstein (Playwright)'s plays include By the Water (Manhattan Theatre Club/Ars Nova, Neglect (Ensemble Studio Theater), All the Days (McCarter Theatre Center), Landladies (Northlight Theatre), and Tell Me I'm Not Crazy and Camp Monster (Williamstown Theater Festival). She was a writer and producer for the USA legal drama "Suits" and has developed shows for Bravo and Apple. Sharyn is the winner of the American Theater Critics Association Francesca Primus Prize and four-time recipient of the Edgerton Foundation New Play Award. Sharyn holds an MFA in dramatic writing from NYU as well as a master's in public health, Hunter College; and a BA in sociology, Vassar College.

Seema Sueko (Director) loves directing, research and development (R&D), as well as building community through theater. She serves as deputy artistic director of Arena Stage, where she directed The Heiress, The Price and Smart People. Her R&D work includes consensus organizing for theater methodology, the Green Theater Choices Toolkit and researching theater and neuroscience. Prior, she was associate artistic director with Pasadena Playhouse and executive artistic director with Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company. Her directing credits include: Arena Stage, Denver Center, Ford's Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse, People's Light, The Old Globe, among others. As a playwright, she received commissions from Mixed Blood Theatre and Baltimore Center Stage. Her work has been recognized by the Chicago Jeff Awards, NAACP, American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Asian Pacific American Friends of the Theater and California State Assembly.

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