SATC’s Contemporary Reading Series Continues With TWENTY MINUTES AFTER DEATH, 3/26

On Monday, March 26, as part of their Contemporary Reading Series, Scandinavian American Theater Company and Scandinavia House will co-present a reading of Danish playwright Thomas Markmann's Twenty Minutes After Death. The reading, for which translator Nina Sokol will be on hand, will take place at 8:00 P.M. at Scandinavia House (58 Park Avenue), with a wine and soda pre-reception beginning at 7:30 P.M. Admission is free.

Originally titled Død Mands Kvinde, Markmann's play tells the story of Helena, an attractive and well-educated young Danish woman. Fed up with the trivialities of conventional relationships, she decides to write to an American inmate serving his ninth year on death row. What starts out as an innocent flirtation turns into an extraordinary love story, in which Helena suddenly finds herself losing control not only of her daily life, but also of herself. Twenty Minutes After Death is a gripping play, filled with humor, which exposes the modern dilemmas inherent to living in a subjective world where dreams and reality may suddenly merge.

At Scandinavia House, Kendra Lou (Helena), Anthony Aguilar (Collin), Sidse Ploug (The Friend) and Jeff House (The Guard/The Psychologist/The Man), directed by Anna Zastrow, will read the translation by Nina Sokol.

Thomas Markmann made his debut in 2009 with Twenty Minutes after Death at Odense Theater while attending The Playwright School in Århus. He received a Reumert Prize, a prestigious Danish prize, for his dramatization of the Danish novel Oh, Romeo; the production was also nominated for a Reumert Prize for children's theater as well. His play The Arabic Blackbird premiered at Dramalabbet Theater in Stockholm, Sweden and has been performed at a number of theaters in Denmark. Additionally, he has written a radio play for Radio Denmark.

April 2012 will see the premiere of his Dreyer: The Danish Tyrant, in Dagmar Bio, the cinema in Copenhagen. Markmann wrote the manuscript for this biopic based on the major Danish film director. His play Brøl will be performed this year at Svalegangen in Århus, and his new adaption of Schiller's The Robbers will be performed in Ålborg this year.

Nina Sokol is a poet and translator. She has translated and edited plays for The Stuart Lynch Company and Hamletscenen in Copenhagen and received a grant from the Danish Arts Council to translate Twenty Minutes After Death to English.

Sokol's poems have been translated from English to Danish by the writer Niels Svarre Nielsen for publication in the near future. They have received honorable mention in The Emily Dickinson Award for Poetry and have appeared in various anthologies, most recently in the journal Ardent: A Journal of Poetry and Art. Sokil was a poet-in-residence at The Vermont Studio Center for four weeks in 2011 and will be attending The Continuing Education Program at the Bread Loaf School of English this coming June.

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