
An online diary of The New York State Writers Institute
The center for the literary arts in the State of New York
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
HOW IT REALLY HAPPENED
Christopher Durang, who visits us on Monday 3/10, is crowned "Poet Laureate of the Absurd" in a New York Observer review of his 2009 play, Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them.
"It’s very good news that Christopher Durang, our Poet Laureate of the Absurd, has written a smashing new play. Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them at the Public Theater is a black farce that’s essentially about, well, torture, and a peculiar brand of American paranoia and bigotry—and I haven’t had such fun at the theater since the recent revival of Mr. Durang’s fable about his own dysfunctional childhood, The Marriage of Bette and Boo."
More in the Observer: http://observer.com/2009/04/im-tickled-by-torture-durang-deals-serious-comedy/
More about Durang's visit: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/durang_chris14.html
“Enthralling theater and television… This is dramatized legal history of the best kind,” said New York Times reviewer Ginia Bellafante of Friday's film, Thurgood, 7:30 p.m. at Page Hall, 9/20.
Bellafante approaches this piece of filmed theater skeptically at first, but is wildly enthusiastic by the end of her review:
"As a form the teleplay is mired in its own noble pedantry, which is why the arrival of “Thurgood” on HBO on Thursday initially seems dubious — especially so, perhaps, because it is a one-man enterprise even more heavily prone to the sensibility of tutorial."
Full review here: http://tv.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/arts/television/24thurgood.html?_r=0
Full Classic Film Series schedule here: http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/programpages/cfs.html
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.