Alexis Soloski & Others to Host Upcoming EnrichMINT Events

The Drama Desk, Lortel and Obie Award-winning Mint Theater Company is pleased to announce a new lineup of EnrichMINT Events, an exciting series of post and pre-show discussions throughout the Mint's upcoming rare revival of Jules Romains' Dr. Knock, Or The Triumph Of Medicine. All of the EnrichMINT Events are free and open to the public.

The new events scheduled for the EnrichMINT Events Series include:

April 17th (following the 2 PM performance)
"Jules RomainS: AN INTRODUCTION"
Jeanine Parisier Plottel

Jeanine Parisier Plottel: Professor Emeritus, Hunter College & The Graduate Center, CUNY, and former chair of the Hunter Department of Romance Languages, is the author of many articles and books in both French and English. The French government has decorated her twice for her contributions to French Language, Literature and Culture. She presently serves on several boards, including Barnard College, where she is a trustee, the Society for French American Cultural Exchange (FACE), the Columbia University Maison Française, and the NYU Institute of French Studies. She traces her intellectual genealogy to Jules Romains: her Ph. D. thesis advisor, friend, and mentor, Jean Hytier, was one of Jules Romains' students.

April 18th (following the 2 PM performance)
"DR KNOCK IN CONTEXT: A DISCUSSION OF THEATER IN FRANCE"
Judith Graves Miller

Professor Judith Graves Miller: Chair, Department of French at NYU and former Director of NYU in Paris from 1998-2003. Dr. Miller specializes in Francophone Literature (particularly theater). Professor Miller has done extensive work in 20th century French theater: Theory, Production and Text and is recognized as a leading authority on Francophone theater. Her talk will focus on theater in France when Dr. Knock was first written and produced.

April 21st (following the 7 PM performance)
"Jules RomainS AND DR. KNOCK: THE BEST OF EUROPEAN THEATER IN THE 1920'S"
Tom Bishop

Tom Bishop: Florence Gould Professor of French Literature, NYU and Director of NYU's Center for French Civilization and Culture. His many publications include From the Left Bank: Reflections on the Modern French Theater and Novel, Remembering Roland Barthes: 20 Years Later, and L'Avant-garde thétrale: French Theater Since 1950. His writings on contemporary theater, and on France and French-American relations have appeared in Le Monde, The New York Times Book Review, Yale French Studies, and elsewhere. Professor Bishop has been awarded the Grand Prize of the Académie Francaise and been named Officer of the French Legion of Honor, Commander of the French Order of Merit, and Officer of the French Order of Arts and Letters.

April 22nd (following the 7 PM performance)
"KNOCK, ROMAINS AND THE ‘UNANIMIST VISION'"
Daniel Gerould
Romains believed that life does not revolve around the individual but rather his place within the structure of contemporary society. His poem La Vie Unanime, like all of his subsequent writing gave expression to this newborn philosophy of "Unanism." Professor Daniel Gerould will explain Romains' idea and discuss the play in this context.

Daniel Gerould, Distinguished Professor, CUNY Graduate Center
Major publications include:Theatre/Theory: Theory/Theatre (ed. Applause, 1999); Guillotine: Its Legend and Lore (Blast Books, 1992); The Witkiewicz Reader (ed. and trans. Northwestern University Press, 1992); Doubles, Demons, and Dreamers: An International Collection of Symbolist Drama (editor. Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1983); and American Melodrama (editor. Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982). He is also the series editor of Polish and Eastern European Archives (Harwood) and editor of Slavic and East European Performance.

April 24th (following the 2 PM performance)
"FEIGNED ILLNESS, A DISCUSSION OF THEATER AND MEDICINE"
Alexis Soloski

Alexis Soloski is a theater critic at The Village Voice and a contributor to The Guardian, The New York Times and BBC Radio. She is completing a dissertation at Columbia University, entitled Feigned Illness: Drama and Disease, which examines the interrelation of theater and medicine and locates the theaters themselves as fraught spaces in which both ideas and diseases can circulate.

May 1st (following the 2 PM performance)
"EXAMINING THE ETHICS OF DR. KNOCK"
Dr. Terry Perlin

Dr. Terry Perlin is a consultant on medical ethics. He is the author of Clinical Medical Ethics: Cases in Practice (Little, Brown and Co.) He has been a faculty member at Williams College (MA); and a Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and a Research Fellow at Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University (OH), and has held appointments at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and the University of California, San Francisco.

The Mint Theater Company's third play of the 2009-2010 season is a rare revival of Dr. Knock, Or The Triumph Of Medicine, Jules Romains' prescient 1923 satire. Gus Kaikkonen, who helmed Mint's acclaimed production The Madras House (2007), will direct, using his own translation and featuring a cast that includes Scott Barrow (33 Variations, Embraceable Me), Thomas M. Hammond (The Madras House, Hamlet (TFANA), The Receptionist), Jennifer Harmon (Dividing the Estate, Barefoot in the Park, Seascape), Patrick Husted (Dr. Bob in Bill W. and Dr. Bob, Wit), Patti Perkins (The Full Monty), and Chris Mixon (eight seasons with Alabama Shakespeare and four seasons for Utah Shakespearean Festival).

This Off-Broadway engagement will begin Wednesday, April 14th and continue through June 6th, with Opening Night set for May 10th.

Health care reform of a darkly comic kind drives Dr. Knock, Or The Triumph Of Medicine. "It is perhaps an appropriately ironic tribute to 20th Century medical advances that Jules Romains' biting satire, Dr. Knock, has managed to keep all its teeth and remained fit and healthy," wrote Time Out London in 1994. "By leveling his sights on such a mercurial, swiftly moving target, Romains has virtually ensured perpetual topicality for his stylish, sparkling work." "Satire and fun are exquisitely mingled" (The Times, London, 1928) as Dr. Knock purchases a moribund practice in sleepy Saint-Maurice and proceeds to rouse the populace to all the advantages that modern medicine has to offer. In the process "he transforms an entire district of unhappily healthy citizens into a flourishing community of happy invalids" (The Times, London, 1994). "The real joke is that Dr. Knock is motivated not by greed or gain but by a perverted idealism," observed the Guardian's Michael Billington.

Dr. Knock, though almost unknown in America, has a long and distinguished history. It premiered in Paris in 1923, running for an unprecedented five years, making Romains a household name. By the time Dr. Knock premiered, Romains had already achieved acclaim as both poet and playwright, but Knock was his dramatic pièce de resistance. After its phenomenal first run, the play became a staple of the French and European repertoire. Regular revivals appeared through the 1960s. Harley Granville-Barker's English version was published in 1925; a London production followed one year later and premiered in New York in 1928. Knock transcended the era's media, conquering stage, screen and television. The BBC filmed Dr. Knock in 1938 and again in 1968. To this day, French schoolchildren still read Dr. Knock. Medical students mount amateur productions. The term knockisme has entered the language to describe gullibility. In England, Dr. Knock was revived successfully at London's Orange Tree Theatre in 1979 and in 1994. Now, for the first time in 72 years, the Mint offers New York audiences a chance to see this neglected French masterpiece. "The mystery is why it should have been so ignored," wondered the Spectator's Sheridan Morley at the 1994 London revival, while the Guardian's Lyn Gardner called Dr. Knock "a real parable for our times."

Performances of Dr. Knock, Or The Triumph Of Medicine will be Tuesday through Thursday at 7 PM, Friday at 8 PM, Saturday at 2 & 8 PM, and Sunday at 2 PM. Tickets are $55. All performances will take place on the Third Floor of 311 West 43rd Street. To purchase tickets or for more information, call 212/315-0231 or visit www.minttheater.org.

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