New Plays: A Talk with theater artists from New York City

Location: Trafó Café, 1094 Budapest, Liliom utca 41. www.trafo.hu
Date: September 10, 2005
Time: 2 p.m.

Purpose: Artistic Exchange

Calling all DIRECTORS, ACTORS, DRAMATURGS, COMPOSERS, SINGER/MUSICIANS and PLAYWRIGHTS:

"You are cordially invited to a free gathering for the purpose of sharing ideas, inspirations and techniques for making new plays more original, unique and innovative. Playwright Ruth Margraff, Composer Nikos Brisco & their CAFÉ ANTARSIA ENSEMBLE will talk about new tools for playwriting, performance and composing from the current New York City theater scene, and emerging from some of the most exclusive American graduate and professional playwriting programs such as New Dramatists, Brown University, Michener Center for Writers, Yale School of Drama, Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis.

Ruth and Nikos will talk about their work in New York City and America, and their travels to various festivals and venues in Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Russia, Greece, Canada, England, Japan, etc.

Asking the questions: How can new plays be inspired by travel? Can a new play take its form from other genres and forms of art? Can new plays have interdisciplinary or hybrid influences such as Chinese Shaolin martial arts fighting styles, Greek blues, Bollywood, etc?

How can research or music lead to writing or performance practices for inspiration? We will look at some recent American plays with alternative forms such as those from Play: A Journal of Plays from Brown University, Moon Marked and Touched by the Sun, Divine Fire: 8 Contemporary Plays Inspired by the Greeks and talk about ways of developing a new play and new playwrights from the page, from music, from rehearsal and from the world.

RUTH MARGRAFF (PROSCENIUM DELIRIOUS) has been called a leader in the American music/theater and new opera movement. Her writings have been developed and produced by the Apollo Theater, Columbia Arts Management. Inc./Big Red Media, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Cooper Union Grand Hall, Lincoln Center, Public Theater, Hourglass Group/PS122, Kitchen, NYTW, Guggenheim Museum, JVC Jazz Festival, Here Arts Center, La Mama Galleria, New Georges, Mabou Mines, Dixon Place@Vineyard, etc. (NYC); in Minneapolis, Seattle, Boston, Tuscaloosa, Dallas, Austin, Providence, Iowa City, Los Angeles and internationally with composer Nikos Brisco at the 2005 Festivalul International de Teatru de la Sibiu (Transylvania, Romania);

2005 Catskills Festival Six of New Theatre/North American Cultural Laboratory (Catskills), 2005 Karantena Performing Arts Festival (Dubrovnik, CROATIA), 2005 Pøíští Vlna/Next Wave Festival (Prague, Czech Republic), 2003 Novaja/New Drama Festival Moscow Art Theatre/Golden Mask Association (Moscow, RUSSIA); 2003 Hydra Rebetiko Music Festival/Melina Mercouri Hall (Isle of Hydra, Greece); 2002 Moscow Contemporary American Series/Bolshoi Zal (Moscow, Russia); 2001 BELEF/Beogradski Letnji Festival/Konak Knjeginje Ljubice (Belgrade, Yugoslavia); etc. Ruth has received 4 Rockefeller Foundation commissions in new opera, Jerome and McKnight Fellowships, 2 NYSCA Individual Artist Awards, an NEA/TCG Fellowship and several grants from TCG/ITI, Here/Harp, New Dramatists, TMUNY, Arts International and a 2006 Fulbright All Disciplines: New Opera award to Greece.

Ruth's work has been published in Divine Fire (Backstage Books), American Theater, Theater Forum, Theater Topics, Theater in Crisis, NuMuse Anthology, Epoch, Patterson Literary Review, Conjunctions: 28, Autonomedia, Smith & Kraus and a forthcoming textbook called Performing the Here and Now: An Introduction to Contemporary Theater & Performance from Kendall/Hunt Publishing. Ruth has taught playwriting at Brown University, University of Texas at Austin/Michener Center for Writers, New Dramatists (where she is an alumnus), Iowa Playwrights’ Workshop, Allihies Language & Art Centre (Ireland), Fordham/Lincoln Center and the Yale School of Drama.

If you wish to participate, please contact: Fruzsina Morcz (fruzsi@trafo.hu)
Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, Budapest – Tel: 456-2040
www.trafo.hu