Dael Orlandersmith Rescheduled to May 1st!

Please note that Dael Orlandersmith, Obie-winning playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist in Drama, has rescheduled her appearances to Monday, May 1st (she was originally scheduled to appear March 20th).

Orlandersmith will deliver the annual Burian Lecture about her life in the theater and her powerful new play, “Until the Flood,” about explosive events and racial tensions in Ferguson, Missouri. Her work frequently explores the struggles of African Americans in urbans settings, and life in the rough East Harlem neighborhood of her childhood. Cosponsored by the Jarka and Grayce Burian Endowment and UAlbany’s Theatre Program

May 1 (Monday):  The 21st Annual Burian Lecture— Dael Orlandersmith, award-winning playwright 

Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

The Burian Lecture — 8:00 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center

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UAlbany Grad Stephen Guirgis Wins Pulitzer

Stephen Adly Guirgis, who graduated from the University at Albany in 1990 with a major in Theatre, is the 2015 winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for his new play "Between Riverside and Crazy."

The Pulitzer jury called the work, "a nuanced, beautifully written play about a retired police officer faced with eviction that uses dark comedy to confront questions of life and death."

Guirgis visited the New York State Writers Institute on April 12, 2010.

More about his visit here:
http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/guirgis_stephen10.html

An interview with Guirgis posted on the Institute's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFR2iMDmcFE

Guirgis studied theatre with NYS Writers Institute Fellow and UAlbany Professor W. Langdon Brown and with the late Jarka Burian of the Theatre Department who-- together with his wife Grayce Burian-- established and endowed the Institute's annual Burian Lecture on the art of the theatre.

More on the Burian Lecture here:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/burian_lectures.html

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Our John Lahr Event in the Times Union

In case you missed it, Paul Grondahl writes about our wonderful event on Wednesday 10/1 with John Lahr in the Times Union:

Biographer John Lahr Dishes on Tennessee Williams at the Writers Institute

Tennessee Williams once drew a pie chart depicting how he divided his time: 90 percent working, 9 percent fighting against lunacy and 1 percent socializing with friends.

The former New Yorker chief drama critic, John Lahr, dissects the workaholic and celebrated playwright in a monumental new biography, "Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh," a 784-page volume published on Sept. 22 by W.W. Norton.

It has received enthusiastic reviews. The Wall Street Journal called it "by far the best book ever written about America's greatest playwright" and literary insiders have already placed it on a list for National Book Award consideration.

More in the TU:   http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Biographer-John-Lahr-dishes-on-Tennessee-Williams-5797788.php

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Guirgis Talks About Philip Seymour Hoffman

Playwright and UAlbany alum Stephen Adly Guirgis talks about his close friend and artistic collaborator Philip Seymour Hoffman during his visit to the Writers Institute in 2010.

A theater director as well as an actor, Hoffman directed five plays written by Guirgis for New York City's award-winning LAByrinth Theatre Company.

The Oscar-winning actor and upstate New York native died earlier this month of a drug overdose.

Watch the YouTube video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFR2iMDmcFE

More about Guirgis:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/guirgis_stephen10.html

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"Black Boy" next week-- One Actor, 15 Characters!

The “Literature to Life” program of American Place Theatre presents a verbatim one-man adaptation of the first half of Richard Wright’s classic autobiographical work, Black Boy. The performance, in which the actor plays more than a dozen characters, dramatizes Wright’s journey from childhood innocence to adulthood in the Jim Crow South, exploring issues that still resonate in today’s cultural dialogue.

American Place Theatre performance of Black Boy
February 12 (Wednesday)
Performance — 7:30 p.m., Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown CampusPre-performance discussion at 7 p.m.
Tickets: general public $15 in advance, $20 day of; students/seniors/UA faculty & staff $10 in advance, $15 day of
Box Office: (518) 442-3997; tickets@albany.edu

Presented by the Performing Arts Center in conjunction with the Writers Institute; with support provided by the Diversity Transformation Fund, administered through the Office of Diversity and Inclusion; and the Holiday Inn Express

More about it here:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/black_boy14.html

Picture:  Tarantino Smith in the one-man show.

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Broadway Star Colman Domingo's Visit

Colman Domingo received more than one standing ovation at UAlbany on Monday for his inspirational message to students and clips of his riveting performances, not to mention his pledges to revive the soon-to-be-cut UAlbany Theater Department.

Domingo talked about his inner city boyhood in West Philadelphia, his improbable success on stage and screen, his indefatigable pursuit of his personal goals as an actor and playwright, his role in the opening scene of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, and his friendship and close working relationship with beloved former UAlbany Theater faculty member Lisa Thompson, whom he called his "soul sister."

Domingo last visited the Institute in February 2007 to direct excerpts from Thompson's plays, prior to many of his recent triumphs.

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Czech Treasure: The Jarka M. Burian Collection at Ohio State

Institute friends Grayce Burian and her husband, the late Jarka Burian, a distinguished member of the UAlbany Theatre faculty, are the subjects of an article in the current issue of  Folio, the newsletter of The Ohio State University Libraries. An excerpt follows:

The Czech Collections at the Theatre Research Institute
by Nena Couch

"The Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute is an active participant in a variety of international initiatives and partnerships involving Czech theatre…"

"One of the Institute’s major Czech treasures is the Jarka M. Burian collection which offers a tremendous resource for researchers in Czech theatre, containing his research papers, posters, programs, photographs, taped interviews with Czech theatre artists, books, and other materials. The Burian collection also documents major cultural and political events, including the Soviet bloc invasion in 1968, which Jarka and Grayce Burian experienced during their many research trips to Prague. Many individual theatre artists including playwright Václav Havel (later President of the Czech Republic), and the majority of scenographers whose design work is held at the Lawrence and Lee Institute are documented in the Burian papers."

"The Burian collection provides a focus of international engagement. During fall 2010, the Institute hosted visiting Fulbright Fellow Barbora Príhodová, Ph.D. student at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. Príhodová’s Fulbright project was part of her doctoral dissertation work on scenographer Josef Svoboda. While it may seem counter-intuitive, it was in fact necessary for Czech scholar Príhodová to come to Columbus to research Czech scenographer Svoboda in order to, as she noted, 'benefit from Jarka Burian’s unique heritage as well as the rich American academic culture.' …"

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YouTube Sensation Sorab Wadia at UAlbany

Sorab Wadia, who stars Wednesday, April 18th in a one-man theatrical adaptation of the bestselling novel, The Kite Runner, became a YouTube sensation in 2007 with his show-stopping number, "I Wanna Be Like Osama" in "Jihad: The Musical" at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. To date, the video has received more than 400,000 hits.

See the video here.

Wadia also performed as Ali Hakim in the U.S. national tour of Trevor Nunn’s production of Oklahoma!. Other credits include the film Suburban Girl (2006) with Sarah Michelle Gellar, the TV sitcom 30 Rock, and the video game Grand Theft Auto IV, in which he plays the voice of an Indian pedestrian who curses graphically in Hindi. More.

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Wally and Andre Return

Wallace Shawn, who visited the Writers Institute in 2007, and Andre Gregory, have announced their third collaboration, a film directed by Jonathan Demme of Shawn's adaptation of Ibsen's "The Master Builder." Their two previous collaborations include 1981's My Dinner with Andre, and 1994's Vanya on 42nd St.

From the New York Times:

When your two previous film collaborations have been a 110-minute dialogue on the nature of theater, art and life; and an informal, street-clothes performance of Chekhov’s "Uncle Vanya" what do you do for an encore?

After a cinematic hiatus of nearly 18 years, Wallace Shawn and André Gregory, the creators of the influential art-house films "My Dinner with Andre" and "Vanya on 42nd St." are ready to answer that question. More.

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A Present for Martin Luther King's Birthday, 1986

From the New York Times, Dec. 29, 1985:

When Toni Morrison, author of the best seller ''Tar Baby'' and winner of a National Book Critics award for ''Song of Solomon,'' accepted the Albert Schweitzer Professorship of the Humanities at the State University of New York at Albany, she expected to lead the proverbially quiet life of an academic - teaching writing and writing fiction. Instead she found herself deeply involved in the theater, as a playwright.

Her drama, ''Dreaming Emmett,'' commissioned by the New York State Writers Institute at SUNY-Albany and directed by Gilbert Moses, will have its world premiere Saturday at the Market Theater there. It will be produced, in conjunction with the Writers Institute and SUNY's Capital District Humanities Program, by the Capital Repertory Company, a resident theater founded by Peter Clough and Bruce Bouchard. More.

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Vaclav Havel (1936-2011)

Grayce Burian, friend of the Writers Institute, reminisced about her friend Vaclav Havel, Nobel Prize-winning playwright and the first President of the Czech Republic (1993-2003), who passed away this past Sunday, December 18th.

Grayce's husband, the late Jarka Burian-- longtime Professor in the the Department of Theatre at UAlbany and America's foremost authority on Czech theatre-- spent a great deal of time with Havel during two extended visits to Czechoslovakia in the 1960s when Havel was a young playwright and Jarka was a visiting scholar.

At SUNY Albany's Arena Summer Theatre, Jarka directed the first American performance of a play by Vaclav Havel, "The Memorandum," in 1966. The play was later performed at the Public Theater in New York City in 1968, where it received widespread international attention.

Grayce and Jarka were invited to meetings of the Czech underground during the Prague Spring prior to the Soviet invasion in 1968. Grayce recalled one meeting in Havel's apartment. In a hushed voice Havel asked Jarka not to speak and had him climb up a ladder to a chandelier where Havel showed him wires and a bugging device. Grayce said he wanted Jarka to know about the device not only for their safety, but also so that Jarka could write about the experience after his return to the United States.

Over the years, the Burians continued to receive letters from Havel thanking Jarka for his scholarly work on the history of the Czech theater. This correspondence is preserved in the Archives of the University at Albany Libraries.

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