2016 Open Books Series to Feature David Scott Kastan, Yael Prizant & Ninotchka Bennahum
By: Tyler Peterson Feb. 08, 2016
Theatre for a New Audience announces its 2016 Open Books series, featuring David Scott Kastan, Yael Prizant & Ninotchka Bennahum: three evenings of lively, engaging conversation with the authors of some of American theatre's most acclaimed new books.
David Scott Kastan, author of A Will to Believe: Shakespeare and Religion, will speak Monday, March 7, at 7:00pm; Yael Prizant will discuss her book Cuba Inside Out: Revolution and Contemporary Theatre Monday, March 14, at 7:00pm; and Ninotchka Bennahum, author of Carmen: A Gypsy Geography, will take the podium Monday, March 21, at 7:00pm.Jonathan Kalb, two-time winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, will moderate, and each evening will include an audience Q&A and a meet-and-greet with the author. Books will be available for purchase (and to be signed). All three free events are offered at Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Place, Brooklyn. Complimentary food and drink will be served, and subscribers receive 10% discount on all books. Reservations are encouraged, and can be made at www.tfana.org/openbooks.Monday, March 7, 7:00pm
David Scott Kastan
A Will to Believe: Shakespeare and Religion is a surprising and often-moving examination of how religion animates Shakespeare's plays. Written and performed in a culture in which religion was inescapable, the plays have usually been seen either as evidence of Shakespeare's disinterested secularism, or as coded signposts to sectarian commitments. David Scott Kastan argues that Shakespeare's plays do not unlock his own beliefs, but rather register how religion changed the author's world. In a series of wonderfully alert and agile readings, Dr. Kastan demonstrates how the fraught religious environment of Post-Reformation England was refracted by the lens of Shakespeare's imagination.
"A Will to Believe is a substantial work by one of the major Shakespeareans of our time. It matches deft critical ability with proper scholarship, wide and deep learning with acute judgment." Andrew Hadfield, Irish Times
David Scott Kastan is the George M. Bodman Professor of English at Yale University. Among his books are Shakespeare and the Shapes of Time (1982), Shakespeare after Theory (1999, and Shakespeare and the Book (2001). He edited the five-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature (2006), and currently serves as one of the general editors of the Arden Shakespeare.
Monday, March 14, 7:00pm
Yael Prizant
Cuba Inside Out: Revolution and Contemporary Theatre is the very first book-length, English-language study of Cuban and Cuban-American plays. In this close examination of seven plays written since 1985, Yael Prizant reveals the intricacies of how revolution is staged theatrically, socially, and politically in the Cuban diaspora and on the island itself. Central to this text is the Cuban Revolution's intersections with globalization, modernity, emigration and privilege. This profound and thoughtful book seeks to alter how U.S. audiences perceive Cuba, its circumstances, and its theatre.
"A wonderfully succinct and yet profound meditation on the changing meanings of revolution in Cuba and how they have been brought to life on the stage. Truly an engaging and thoughtful book."Ruth Behar, editor of Bridges to Cuba and The Portable Island: Cubans at Home in the World
Yael Prizant is a theatrical translator, dramaturg, and educator. She has translated works by Cuban playwright Abel González Melo, including Chamaco, Nevada and Talco. She has also authored many theatre and translation reviews and has had essays published in the collected volume Performance, Exile and 'America.'
She is currently an Assistant Professor of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame.
Monday, March 21, at 7:00pm Ninotchka Bennahum
In Carmen: A Gypsy Geography, Ninotchka Bennahum traces the genealogy of the female Gypsy presence in her iconic operatic role: from her genesis in the ancient Mediterranean world, her emergence as flamenco artist in the architectural spaces of Islamic Spain, her persistent manifestation in Picasso, and her contemporary relevance on stage. Carmen, who has emerged as a cipher for the unfettered female artist, is here an embodied historical archive. The Gypsy dancer's many-layered geography provides the book with a unique, nonlinear form that opens new pathways to reading performance and writing history. Through Carmen, we come to understand the promises and dangers of transnational identity, and the ways performance can be used as an expanded historical methodology.
"Only someone with Bennahum's background could have written this book in such a way that it would appeal to dancers, historians, opera lovers, and those interested in Roma history, feminism, and issues of identity." K. Lynass, Choice
Ninotchka Bennahum has choreographed over 40 ballets that have been performed nationally and internationally, and is a two-time Rockefeller Grant recipient. She has written about dance and culture for many publications, including The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Dance Research Journal. She is an Associate Professor of Theatre & Dance at University of California, Santa Barbara, and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Society of Dance History Scholars.
Theatre for a New Audience
Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) is a modern classic theatre. It produces Shakespeare alongside other major authors from the world repertoire, such as Harley Granville Barker, Edward Bond, Adrienne Kennedy and Wallace Shawn. It has played off- and on Broadway and toured nationally and internationally. The Theatre's productions have been honored with Tony, Obie, Drama Desk, Drama League, Callaway, Lortel and Audelco awards and nominations and reach an audience diverse in age, economics and cultural backgrounds. TFANA created and runs the largest in-depth program in the New York City Public Schools to introduce students to Shakespeare, and has served more than 127,000 students since the program began in 1984.
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