New York, NY: The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (Frank Hentschker, Executive Director) has announced the rest of its Spring 2012 season, including rarely-seen performances, premiere readings of acclaimed international playwrights, and day-long symposia on everything from ecologically inspired performance (for Earth Day!) to the Group Theatre.

This year our MESTC season will run until June 25, 2023 at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (365 Fifth Avenue, at 34th Street), with events occurring on May 21, June 4, June 7 and June 25.  While some events are all day (see complete listing below), all evening discussions start at 6:30pm, and every event—without exception—is completely free and open to the public.

All programs are subject to change. For updates, please visit http://www.theSegalCenter.org. All events take place at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue/34th St., New York, NY 10016.

To join its email list, please contact us at mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212.817.1860. Additional information is available by visiting the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center website at http://web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc.


Monday, May 21, 2023

6:30pm
The Sundance Kid Is Beautiful with Christopher Knowles
followed by a conversation with Lauren DiGiulio and The Watermill Center

Christopher Knowles first became widely known in the theatrical community as an early collaborator of Robert Wilson, when he provided the libretto for Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’s genre-changing opera Einstein on the Beach while a teenager in 1976. Knowles has continued to cultivate an astoundingly diverse and prolific arts practice that includes his infamous “typings.” Seize this opportunity to witness the rarely glimpsed artist perform The Sundance Kid Is Beautiful and a second performative piece in a setting of his own sculptural design, staged by Noah Khoshbi, and then stay to hear the artist in conversation with Lauren DiGiulio. (Presented in collaboration with The Watermill Center, Dissident Industries, and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise.)

Monday, June 4, 2023
All Day + 6:30 p.m.
Elebash Recital Hall (different venue! Elebash Recital Hall is also in the CUNY Graduate Center, so the same address and contact information applies.)

The Group Theatre and How It Transformed American Culture
In 1931, three theatrical visionaries—Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, and Cheryl Crawford—created America’s first permanent company of actors, The Group Theatre. Modeled on the Moscow Art Theatre, The Group Theatre presented timely plays using Constantin Stanislavsky’s System of Acting with an ensemble that included Stella Adler, Sandy Meisner, Bobby Lewis, Sidney Lumet, and Elia Kazan. The Group Theatre premiered many legendary American plays over a ten-year period, among them Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing, and their influence continues. Theatre historian Mel Gordon and international artist/educator Ronald Rand invite you to join Eli Wallach, Edward Albee, Lee Grant, Wendy Smith, Ellen Adler, and other distinguished guests for this special day. Discover 10 secrets about The Group Theatre—and reflect upon the broad cultural impact of this legendary ensemble. The day will feature play readings, film screenings, Group Theatre exercises, sound and film clips, and panel discussions about The Group Theatre and its legacy.


Looking east across 5th Avenue and 34th Street...

Thursday, June 7, 2023
6:30pm
The Brighton Beach Project (Elyse Dodgson, UK) With Playwrights Natalia Vorozhbit (Ukraine), Mikhail Durnenkov (Russia) and Pavel Pryazhko (Belarus)

Join international theatre champion Elyse Dodgson as she and a trio of Russian-languageplaywrights uncover New York’s hidden immigrant histories—as well as that of Dodgson’s own family. In the 1960s, Dodgson’s mother filmed a documentary about life in Coney Island, a document now lost. That missing film and her own family’s emigration from Eastern Europe to Brighton Beach inspired Dodgson, known best as the much-lauded director of the Royal Court Theatre’s International Playwrights Programme, to commission three Russian-language playwrights to spend two weeks in Brighton Beach and to turn their findings into plays. Now Natalia Vorozhbit (Ukraine), Pavel Pryazhko (Belarus) and Mikhail Durnenkov (Russia) come to the Graduate Center to allow us a peek into their processes of confronting the twin neighborhoods of immigration and memory. Joining the conversation will be translator Sasha Dugdale and director Ramin Gray. In collaboration with the Genesis Foundation, the Public Theater (NY) and the Actors Touring Company (UK).

Monday, June 25, 2023
7:30pm (Later than usual start time!)
Contemporary Argentine Theatre: Claudio Tolcachir + Timbre 4
A presentation by TeatroStageFest in collaboration with the Segal Center

Argentinean playwright, performer and director Claudio Tolcachir founded Timbre 4—at once a theatre, a school, a company and a collective workshop—inside his own small Buenos Aires apartment in the late ’90s. Since then, this staggeringly successful member of the independent theatre scene has won every major Argentine theatre award and has traveled extensively to international festivals, including the Festival d’automne. Come to the Segal for an evening with the playwright, featuring a reading from the new Segal publication of Jean Graham-Jones’ translations of his oeuvre, including Tolcachir’s first original play, 2005’s La Omisión de la familia Coleman. This improvisationally built drama about a family circle in which violence gradually replaces speech has been a sold-out hit since its premiere, and no conversation about the vibrant Argentinian theatrical scene can be complete without it. With translator Jean Graham-Jones. Reading directed by Susana Tubert, Producing Executive Director of TeatroStageFest.

Martin E. Segal Theater Center
The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (MESTC) is a non-profit center for theatre, dance, and film affiliated with CUNY’s Ph.D. Program in Theatre. The Center’s mission is to bridge the gap between academia and the professional performing arts communities both within the United States and internationally. By providing an open environment for the development of educational, community-driven, and professional projects in the performing arts, MESTC is a home to theatre scholars, students, playwrights, actors, dancers, directors, dramaturgs, and performing arts managers from the lo­cal and international theatre communities.

Through diverse programming—staged readings, theatre events, panel discussions, lectures, conferences, film screenings, dance—and a number of publications, MESTC enables artists, academics, visiting scholars and performing arts professionals to participate actively in the advance­ment and appreciation of the entire range of theatrical experience. 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, written, translated and edited by leading scholars. www.mestc.org.

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