NYU Skirball Center to Sponsor SHAKESPEARE AROUND THE WORLD Panel at Metropolitan Museum of Art, 3/4

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts will sponsor a panel discussion on "Shakespeare Around the World" on Tuesday, March 4 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street). The event begins with an open exhibit of "Ink Art" at 3PM, followed by the 4PM panel discussion and a 5PM reception. The panel is free with museum admission. Please RSVP to audience.development@metmuseum.org or 2126502525.

"Shakespeare Around the World" will be moderated by Cecilia Rubino, Assistant Professor of Theater, The New School. Other panelists scheduled to appear include Tom Bird, Executive Producer, Shakespeare's Globe; Jenna Dioguardi, BFA Drama Candidate, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU; James Shapiro, Professor of English, Columbia University/ Shakespeare Scholar in Residence, Public Theater; and Katherine Schaap Williams, Assistant Professor of Literature, NYU Abu Dhabi.

These Shakespeare experts and scholars will discuss Shakespeare's universality and omnipresence in contemporary culture as well as The National Theatre of China upcoming production of Richard III at the second annual Visions + Voices Global Performance Series at NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts from March 26-30. This production of Richard III is reinvigorated through an exciting adaptation utilizing kung fu and acrobatics in addition to traditional Chinese stagecraft, masks and music to create a world where madness aches for power. For more information about this production, visit http://nyuskirball.org/calendar/ntcrichard. For more information about the Vision + Voices: China series visit http://nyuskirball.org/china.

NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts is the premier venue for the presentation of cultural and performing arts events for New York University and lower Manhattan. Led by executive producer Jay Oliva (President Emeritus, NYU) and executive director Michael Harrington, the programs of NYU Skirball reflect NYU's mission as an international center of scholarship, defined by excellence and innovation and shaped by an intellectually rich and diverse environment. A vital aspect of the Center's mission is to build young adult audiences for the future of live performance. For more information, please visit www.nyuskirball.org.

CECILIA RUBINO wrote and directed 'From the Fire' (music composed by Elizabeth Swados) which won the UK/Music Theater awards for best music, best production and best new musical at the Edinburgh Fringe Theater Festival. For the Moliere Festival at WNYC New York Public Radio's Jerome L Green Performance Space, she recently directed 'The School for Husbands' and 'The Imaginary Cuckold.' Also at the Green Space at WNYC New York Public Radio, she co-directed 'The Shakespeare Marathon' and directed 'India Ink', a radio play by Tom Stoppard for WNYC's 'T Is For Tom' series. She adapted, wrote and directed, 'Mark Twain: Adventures in American Humor', which recently premiered at the Morgan Library and performed at the Roxy Regional Theater in Tennessee. Rubino is an Assistant Professor of Theater at Lang College at The New School and currently coordinates The New School's undergraduate B.A. Theater Program. She regularly teaches an Acting Shakespeare class at The New School and recently directed productions of 'As You Like It' and 'The Tempest.'

TOM BIRD is Executive Producer at Shakespeare's Globe in London. He was Director of the Globe to Globe Festival for the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, for which he won a Critics' Circle Special Award with Dominic Dromgoole in 2013. Among many other projects for the Globe, he is currently planning a tour of Hamlet to every country in the world between April 2014 and April 2016.

JENNA DIOGUARDI is a BFA Drama student at Playwrights Horizons Theater School (PHTS), one of the drama studios of Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Along with being involved in several student and faculty led productions at NYU, she had the privilege to participate in the first ever Global Shakespeare Festival in Abu Dhabi last March. She is the stage manager of Political Subversities. In the near future, she will be working on creating a devised film as part of the Upper Level Performance program at PHTS.

JAMES SHAPIRO is Larry Miller Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1985. His most recent publications include 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (2005), and Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? (2010). In 2012 he co-authored and presented a 3-part BBC documentary, Shakespeare: The King's Man. His Library of America collection, Shakespeare in America will be out in April, and Shakespeare in 1606: The Year of Lear in 2016. He has been awarded fellowships from the NEH, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He serves on the Board of Governors of the Royal Shakespeare Company and of the Folger Shakespeare Library and as Vice President of the Authors Guild. He is also Shakespeare Scholar in Residence at New York's Public Theater. In 2011 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

KATHERINE SCHAAP WILLIAMS is Assistant Professor of Literature at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). She received her doctoral degree from Rutgers University, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in ELH, English Studies, and Disability Studies Quarterly. The book she is currently writing, Irregular Bodies: Performing Disability on the Early Modern English Stage, argues that theatrical representations employ disability to explore key social formations in the early modern period. At NYUAD, she teaches and participates in the Global Shakespeare Project.