Radar Redux.com is expanding the traditional concept of journalism, to cover a wide array of Baltimore Arts and Culture. We are a partnership between the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, Maryland Institute College of Art, and Johns Hopkins University.
Please join us for a conversation about a groundbreaking Russian drama translation project with representatives of Philip Arnoult’s Center for International Theatre Development.
The New Russian Drama: Translation / Production / Conference (2007-2010), a project hosted by Arnoult’s CITD and Towson University (Baltimore, MD), commissioned the translation of ten major plays by six contemporary Russian authors. Throughout the 2009-2010 season, these plays are being presented in productions, workshops and readings at Towson University and other partner institutions, such as the New York Theater Workshop, the Martin Segal Center at CUNY, the Single Carrot Theater in Baltimore and elsewhere. The project was devised specifically to provide new, stageworthy “American language” play texts for the American stage. All are plays that have had significant success throughout Europe in recent years – many of them becoming hits – but have remained inaccessible to Americans because of the language barrier. Speaking about the project, and about contemporary Russian drama in general, will be playwright Maksym Kurochkin, Moscow critic and festival organizer Yelena Kovalskaya, translator and author John Freedman, and CITD founder and director Philip Arnoult.
Philip Arnoult is widely recognized, nationally and internationally, for his commitment to long-term, international projects, introducing artists and supporting those first steps toward collaborative projects.
He is the founder of The Baltimore Theatre Project (1971) and the Center for International Theatre Development (CITD) (1990).
Arnoult worked with the East Africa Office of the Ford Foundation in the development of a Media Art and Culture program in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.
He continues his relationships with Stacy Klein and Double Edge’s Farm in western Massachusetts, the Grotowski Institute and Theatre ZAR in Wroclaw, Poland, and various projects in Bulgaria, Romania and Armenia.
He has worked with Antioch College, The University of Tennessee, Bennington College, and Towson University in a variety of consultative roles.
Maksym Kurochkin is one of the most imaginative playwrights in Moscow today. John Freedman, the Moscow Times Theater Critic, called him “the ideal playwright for the global age.” Mr. Kurochkin’s plays have been staged throughout Russia and the world. He is the recipient of numerous prestigious prizes, including Boldest Experiment of the Year from the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily for his play Kitchen, the Moscow New Drama award for the futuristic comedy Tityus the Irreproachable, and the Russian Anti-Booker award for experimenting with new avenues in drama. Kitchen, a smash-hit in Moscow, has been credited with helping to steer Russian theater away from revivals, back toward contemporary work. The Moscow Times named his Repress and Excite the best play of the 2006-7 Moscow theater season. A translation of that play appeared in TheatreForum, the leading international theater journal in the U.S., as did a translation of Vodka, Fucking, and Television, his trailblazing work from 2003. A translation of The Schooling of Bento Bonchev was presented in a workshop reading at Towson University in February, and will appear in May 2010 in Performing Arts Journal. John Hanlon’s translation of Mooncrazed was presented at the HotINK festival of contemporary drama at NYU in January 2010. A reading of Tityus the Irreproachable, translated by Noah Birksted-Breen, was a featured event of the Russian Theatre Festival in London in February 2010. Mr. Kurochkin writes for film and television, as well as Maxim, a popular Russian-language cultural journal.
Yelena Kovalskaya is the theater editor of Afisha magazine, one of Moscow’s popular cultural guides. Known in Moscow as an active supporter of new talent, she has been the art director of the prestigious Lyubimovka Festival of Young Drama since 2004, working closely on special projects with the Royal Court Theatre. She frequently curates the Russian Case festival, a special event held annually for foreign visitors to Moscow’s Golden Mask Festival. Kovalskaya was a member of the collective creative team that staged Klim’s “Alcestis” in Moscow in 2001.
John Freedman has written or edited nine books about Russian drama and theater and has been the theater critic of The Moscow Times since 1992. His play translations – including those of Maksym Kurochkin – have been performed in the United States, Australia and Canada, and published in numerous anthologies and journals. He is the Russian director of The New Russian Drama: Translation / Production / Conference (2007-2010), a project hosted by Towson University (Baltimore, MD) and Philip Arnoult’s Center for International Theater Development (CITD). Freedman previously appeared at CUNY in 2008 with Kama Ginkas and in 2009 with Olga Mukhina.
Watch it here on our RADAR REDUX LIVE page or go to our USTREAM page:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/radar-redux—baltimore-arts-and-culture
After the broadcast the show will be placed in rotation, so the community can watch rebroadcast when desired.
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