The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center presents New Plays from the Caribbean livestreaming on the worldwide, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV community on Tuesday 2 May 2023 at 9:30 a.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 11:30 a.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC -5) / 12:30 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4).
Join us for a dialog celebrating the distinctive anthology and newest Segal Center Publication New Plays from the Caribbean, a most important and lasting a part of the 2019 Caribbean Theater Project ACT (Actions Caribéennes Théâtrales)—initiated and co-organized by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center in New York City, the theater firm Siyaj from Guadeloupe, and Stéphanie Bérard.
The undertaking was impressed by a dialog S. Bérard had in 2017 with Frank Hentschker, the director of the Segal Center. She was asking how they might discover a option to make Francophone Caribbean theatre accessible to audiences outdoors the insular perimeter and the French-speaking zone. They determined to stage—inside two days—elaborate studying of six performs from well-known and emergent Caribbean feminine and male theatre artists on the Martin E. Segal Theatre in December of 2019 in entrance of an American viewers. It was the primary play studying competition with French talking playwrights from completely different Caribbean nations within the historical past of theatre—and final LIVE Segal Center occasion earlier than the Time of Corona/COVID. The guide consists of six performs from Haiti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe written by Jean-René Lemoine, Guy Régis Jr, Gaël Octavia, Daniely Francisque, Luc Saint-Eloy, Magali Solignat, and Charlotte Boimare. Engaged in a inventive and progressive mixing of types and languages (French and Creole), these Caribbean playwrights current a politically engaged theatre whereas renewing dramatic varieties, content material, and aesthetics. They inform us the tales and histories of up to date Caribbean folks by exploring ardour, need, and the collective expertise of trauma and loss after a pure catastrophe. They denounce social, racial, and gender violence by staging real-life dramas and main crime investigation.
Daniely Francisque
Born in Martinique, Daniely Francisque grew up within the suburbs of Paris. After learning languages and cultural administration, she determined to show to the humanities and skilled as an actress, singer, and dancer. She appeared on stage (in performs by Molière, Beckett, José Pliya, Carole Fréchette, Guy Régis Jr) and on display (cinema and TV) in about 60 theater and dance productions in France and the Caribbean. After returning to Martinique, she cofounded in 2010 the theater firm TRACK with Patrice Le Namouric, and indicators productions with sturdy bodily and emotional impression, questioning femininity, violence, and reminiscence in post-colonial societies, in a theater impressed by magic realism. She has written 4 performs, and each her performs Cyclones (Hurricanes) and Ladjables (She-Devil) have been translated into English. She will current a brand new work on the 77th version of the Avignon competition in July 2023, in this system Vive le Sujet.
Synopsis of Ladjablès (Wild Woman): During a scorching night time of Carnival, a heartless and shameless seducer turns into infected by a bewitching dancer who stirs his need up whereas denying herself to him. The masked girl leads the person right into a vertiginous mating dance. Intoxicated by his libertine need, he’ll do the whole lot to beat her with out realizing that the predator is slowly turning into the prey.
Gaël Octavia
Born in 1977 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, and at the moment dwelling in Paris, Gaël Octavia is a multifaced artist who writes, paints, and makes quick films. Influenced by the Martinican society the place she grew up, she questions in her inventive work common modern themes comparable to migration, social exclusion, id, and ladies’s situation. She is the writer of 5 performs that had staged readings in France, the US, Africa, and the Caribbean, and acquired quite a few awards, amongst them the Prix Wepler-Fondation La Poste in 2017 for her first novel La fin de Mame Baby.
Synopsis of Une vie familiale (Family): A father who hides his homosexuality and escapes a stifling and confined household. An alcoholic stay-at-home mom who’s ready for her husband and jealous of the relationships he has with their kids. A brother and a sister who sleep in the identical room, in the identical mattress. In this banal dysfunctional household, the place everybody has a tough time to play the social sport, all of the lies, subterfuge, and silences find yourself smashing the too small body of conventions.
Charlotte Boimare
Born in Metropolitan France, Charlotte Boimare was skilled as an actress in Paris and labored with Dario Fo and Franca Rame, Jean-Luc Moreau, Christophe Botti, and Michel Laliberté. She has additionally performed briefly movies and TV collection. Because she loves telling tales, she began to jot down performs with Magali Solignat.
Magali Solignat
Born in Metropolitan France, Magali Solignat lives in South of France the place she is an actress, director of clown exhibits, and offers theater workshops in secondary colleges. Trained in appearing in Paris, she labored in Guadeloupe for a few years and has labored in cinema with Peter Watkins and in theater with José Pliya and Jacques Martial.
Charlotte Boimare and Magali Solignat have co-written three performs: Touche moi, Maïwen 16 as et demi, and Le jour où mon père m’a tué which was staged learn on the Avignon Theater Festival in July 2022.
Synopsis of Le jour où mon père m’a tué (The Day My Father Killed Me): Blackbird is a play based mostly on a real story: a singer murdered his personal son a number of years in the past in Guadeloupe. Conceived as a documentary theater (docudrama), the play lets us hear a number of voices that provide a polyphonic narrative account of the drama. Gossips, police experiences, and SMS combine as much as examine how this homicide occurred whereas questioning violence in at the moment’s Caribbean society, household and elevating instructional points.
Luc Saint-Éloy
Dramatist, director and actor, Luc Saint-Éloy is the director of the Théâtre de l’Air Nouveau, a theater firm based in 1983 in Paris. Born in Djibouti, he was skilled in France as an actor and has been very engaged within the promotion and protection of Afro-Caribbean arts as the pinnacle of the Centre Culturel pour la promotion des arts afro-Caraïbes based in 1998 in Paris. He has directed about 20 performances linking theater, music, dance, storytelling, and revisiting the historical past of colonialism and slavery. His newest play L’unattainable procès was carried out in 2018 within the Festival culturel de la Martinique, within the National theater L’Artchipel in Guadeloupe, in Paris, and was chosen by the Festival Cap Excellence in Guadeloupe and the Fesetival de Limoges in 2020.
Synopsis of Trottoir chagrin (Street Sad): Marlène prostitutes herself on the streets of Paris. She doesn’t care about something and anybody. One night, she comes again the place her brother Jeannot was murdered a 12 months earlier than. She meets a mysterious man with whom she begins a dialog. She tells her story, her reminiscences and enters right into a harmful sport of seduction.
Guy Régis Junior
Born in Haiti, Guy Régis Junior is a author (dramatist, novelist, poet), director and actor, video maker, and translator of Camus and Proust in Creole. In 2001 he based the corporate NOUS Théâtre (WE Theater) which promotes a political theater and experimental corporal strategies. His performs have been staged within the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and South America. After directing the part of Theater Studies within the National School of the Arts in Port-au-Prince, he’s now the director of the Festival 4 Chemins, actively engaged within the growth of performing arts in Haiti.
Synopsis of De toute la terre le grand effarement (And the Whole Earth Quakes): Two ladies, two survivors of a disaster, stand on a hill overlooking a destroyed metropolis. The Youngest and the Oldest take a look at the desolated spectacle and listen to the lamentations, prayers, and songs of the survivors staring down. The two ladies quite the opposite search for within the sky and depend the taking pictures stars, speaking repeatedly to maintain awake and refill the void.
Elvia Gutierrez
Elvia Gutierrez (Mexico/China/France) created the SIYAJ firm in 2002 along with the actor, writer and director Gilbert Laumord. As the co-director and producer Gutierrez works tirelessly in direction of the dissemination of Guadeloupe tradition. She is contributing in direction of fostering Caribbean worldwide affect via workshops, productions, worldwide excursions, analysis and coaching within the area of theater and efficiency, specializing in Cuba and Haiti, the United States and South Korea. Gutierrez organized inventive trade between Paris and Tokyo with Master Izumi’s School of Kyögen and she or he was the manufacturing supervisor on the French Connection Project Métissage, working in France, Brazil, Guatemala, and Mexico and have become the chief producer of the undertaking for French/German cultural TV channel Arte. She was a co-producer for the Off Street Theater Company’s broadcast of the opera “Carmen Opéra de rue,” a creative trade between France, Venezuela, Mexico, and Colombia. She collaborated with Casa de las Américas in Cuba for celebration of the work of the legendary Guadeloupean author and large of literature Maryse Condé. Gutierrez was instrumental in creating the distinctive anthology New Plays from the Caribbean represents a most important and lasting a part of the 2019 Caribbean Theater Project ACT (Actions Caribéennes Théâtrales)—co-organized by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center in New York City, Stéphanie Bérard (France) and her theater firm SIYAJ.
Stéphanie Bérard
Stéphanie Bérard holds a joint Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and the Université de Provence. A specialist of Caribbean and African theater, she has taught within the US, Canada, and France. Her analysis is located on the crossroads of postcolonial and theater research, and explores the historical past of Francophone drama, linguistics (Creole and French), oral custom, and the combination of rituals on stage. She is the writer of Théâtres des Antilles: traditions et scènes contemporaines (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2009), Le Théâtre-Monde de José Pliya (Paris, Ed. Honoré Champion, 2015) and co-edited Emergences Caraïbes: une création théâtrale archipélique in Africultures (2010). She acquired an NEH Fellowship for her analysis undertaking on Haitian theater and a European Marie Curie Fellowship for the FACT undertaking (Francophone African and Caribbean Theaters). With Elvia Gutiérrez and Frank Hentschker, she co-curated the ACT undertaking (Actions Caribéennes Théâtrales) in New York in 2019 to advertise Francophone Caribbean performs in English translation. She co-edited the gathering New Plays from the Caribbean with Frank Hentschker (Martin Theater Center Publications, 2022).