Takeshi Kawamura, Lee Breuer, PEN World Voices Festival and More Set for Segal Center's 2015 Spring Season

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at the CUNY Graduate Center announces its Spring 2015 season of public programs. The Segal Center's 2015 Spring season offers ten new public events beginning on March 9 -- featuring contemporary theatre and performing artists from around the world -- including the annual three-day PEN World Voices International Play Festival, and retrospectives of the work of formidable American artists Lee Breur and Richard Foreman. All free.

Highlights from the Segal Center's Spring 2015 season of programs include:

· An evening with Japanese avant-garde playwright and director, Takeshi Kawamura, March 9: Kawamura returns to the Segal Center with his new work Four, directed by John Jesurun and translated by Philip Flavin.

· The Films of Lee Breuer: Mabou Mines Dollhouse & Others, March 30: Join us for the first retrospective of American playwright, director, filmmaker, poet, lyricist and academic Lee Breuer's work on film, plus an evening panel.

· PEN World Voices International Play Festival, May 4, 5, 11: The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center presents World Voices: International Play Festival 2015. As part of the 2015 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, the Segal Center will showcase play readings by nine of the world's most respected dramatists from Afghanistan, Argentina, Cuba, France, Germany, Indonesia, Kenya, and Uganda.

· Richard Foreman, Filmmaker, May 18: The first retrospective of Richard Foreman's work for film, including films about Richard Foreman. Screenings all day, plus an evening panel discussion.

All events (unless otherwise noted) are presented at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, New York, NY 10016. All are free of charge and open to the public. First come, first served. Dates and times are listed below. All programs are subject to change. For updates, visit www.theSegalCenter.org.

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MESTC SPRING 2015 FULL SEASON LISTING:

March 9: An Evening with Takeshi Kawamura. Prefaced by an Afternoon of Japanese Chamber Music

The Segal Theatre

6:30pm Reading l 4:00pm Concert

Kawamura gained recognition in the 1980s for his popular culture-influenced, violent, highly physical plays. Building upon this early work with later projects of social criticism and postmodern theatrical experimentation, Kawamura secured his position as an internationally recognized theatre artist. As artistic director of theatre companies Daisan Erotica and T Factory, Kawamura uses his plays to comment directly and indirectly on Japanese social conditions and current events while prompting audiences to consider issues such as the shaping influences of media, the confusion of reality with fantasy, and the nature of human individuality.

Kawamura and Jesurun are currently collaborating on another project, Tokyo/New York Correspondence Chapter 1, On The Street, which premiered February 27 at Morishita Studio B in Japan.

***In the afternoon, three noted artists - Kurahashi Yodo, Ishigure Masayo, and Philip Flavin - will perform a program of Japanese chamber music featuring the three instruments comprising the sankyoku ensemble: shakuhachi, shamisen, and koto. The musicians will present a range of works including a shakuhachi honkyoku (an 18th century classical work for solo shakuhachi), a sakumono (a classical work for jiuta shamisen), a contemporary composition for solo koto, and a Yaegoromo (an early 19th century sankyoku).***

March 16: An Evening with Leslie Ayvazian

The Segal Theatre
8:00pm Reading

Join us for an evening with US/Armenian playwright Leslie Ayvazian, the author of eight full-length and seven one-act plays, published by Samuel French and Dramatists Play Service. Her play Nine Armenians won the John Gassner/Outer Critics Circle Award for best new American play, and was a runner-up for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.

The evening commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, also known as the Armenian Holocaust and, by Armenians, as Medz Yeghern or "Great Crime", with a reading of Leslie Ayvazian's new play 15/15, her second work about this legacy.

Co-presented with The Play Company (New York), Kate Loewald (Artistic Director), and Melissa Hardy (Artistic Associate).

March 30: The Films of Lee Breuer: Mabou Mines Dollhouse & Others

The Segal Theatre

6:30pm + All Day Screenings

Lee Breuer is an American playwright, director, filmmaker, poet, lyricist, and academic, and co-artistic director of Mabou Mines Theater Company, which he founded in 1970 with JoAnne Akalaitis, Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, and David Warrilow. Breuer is perhaps best known for The Gospel at Colonus, a collaboration with Bob Telson, nominated for a Pulitzer, Grammy, Tony, and Emmy, and Mabou Mines Dollhouse, which won Obies for Best Director and Best Performance (2004). Screenings will begin at 10am.

April 6: Sibyl Kempson with 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co.

The Segal Theatre

Afternoon + 6:30pm Reading

Join us for a day with American mercurial and shape shifting playwright Sibyl Kempson for the official and spiritual launch of her latest adventure: her own performance company, 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co. The event will feature excerpted readings of Sibyl Kempson's early and new work, as well as an afternoon presentation.

April 13: An Evening with Ayad Akhtar

The Segal Theatre

6:30pm Reading

Join us for an evening with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar. With Neilesh Bose (St. John's University) and Maha Chehlaoui (Noor Theatre). Co-Presented with GC CUNY's Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center (MEMEAC).

April 23: Urban Dramaturgy

The Segal Theatre

6:30pm Conversation

Join us for an evening with Bertie Ferdman who will discuss new tendencies in contemporary American dramaturgy with Mallory Catlett, Peter Eckersall, Andrew Kircher, and Jeff Stark.

This evening is presented in collaboration with the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA).

April 28: Book Celebration: Four Millennial Plays from Belgium

The Segal Theatre

7:30pm Conversation

This anthology captures tendencies of contemporary European playwriting in the beginning of the new millennium - focusing on race, inter-continental marriage, the privileges allowed society's leaders, the resurgence of the Extreme Right, and creative ways of juggling love relationships - presented in a variety of accessible styles.

Featuring discussion with Belgian playwrights Jacques De Decker, Serge Goriely, Pascal Vrebos, and editor/translator and specialist in Belgian theatre, David Willinger (Professor of Theatre at City College and the CUNY Graduate Center's Ph.D. Program).

May 4: PEN World Voices: International Play Festival

4:30pm | Segal Theatre

Infinite Incompleteness

Written by Hadi Marifat & Hjalmar Jorge Joffre-Eichhorn (Afghanistan)

7:30pm | Segal Theatre

The Animal of Time

Written by Valère Novarina (France) & Translated by Amin Erfani

May 5: PEN World Voices: International Play Festival

2:00pm | Segal Theatre

Strings

Written by Angella Emurwon (Uganda)

5:00pm | Segal Theatre

My Uncle, The Exile

Written by Yerandy Fleites Pérez (Cuba) & Translated by Julian Mesri

7:30pm | Segal Theatre

The Street of Ants

Written by Roland Schimmelpfennig (Germany) & Translated by David Tushingham (UK)

May 11: PEN World Voices: International Play Festival

2:00pm | Segal Theatre

Picnic

Written by Joned Suryatmoko (Indonesia) & Translated by Barbara Hatley

5:00pm | Segal Theatre

Black Maria on Koinange Street

Written by Sitawa Namwalie (Kenya)

7:30pm | Segal Theatre
Spam

Written by Rafael Spregelburd (Argentina) & Translated by Jean Graham-Jones

May 18: Richard Foreman, Filmmaker

Segal Theatre

All Day + 6:30pm Screenings

Join us for the very first retrospective of Richard Foreman's work for film, including films about Richard Foreman, and an evening panel. The legendary New York auteur-du-theatre stopped working for the theatre and now considers himself a filmmaker. In 2012, Foreman returned, thirty years after Strong Medicine, with a full-length film, Once Every Day. Shot in just six days, Foreman uses his performance work as a matrix for fascinating collage of images, sounds, and ideas for a film with a well-hidden plot - edited over a period of one and a half years.

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The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center is a non-profit center for theatre, dance, and film affiliated with CUNY's Ph.D. Program in Theatre. The Center's mission is to bridge the gap between academia and the professional performing arts communities both within the United States and internationally. By providing an open environment for the development of educational, community-driven, and professional projects in the performing arts, The Segal Center is a home to theatre scholars, students, playwrights, actors, dancers, directors, dramaturgs, and performing arts managers from the local and international theatre communities. Programs include staged readings to further the development of new and classic plays, festivals celebrating New York performance (PRELUDE) and international plays (PEN World Voices: International Play Festival), screenings of performance works on film (Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance), artists in conversation, academic lecture series, televised seminars, symposia, and arts in education programs. In addition, the Center maintains its long-standing visiting-scholars-from-abroad program, publishes a series of highly regarded academic journals, as well as single volumes of importance (including plays in translation), all written and edited by renowned scholars.

The Graduate Center, CUNY, of which the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center is an integral part, is the doctorate-granting institution of The City University of New York (CUNY). An internationally recognized center for advanced studies and a national model for public doctoral education, the school offers more than thirty doctoral programs, as well as a number of master's programs. Many of its faculty members are among the world's leading scholars in their respective fields, and its alumni hold major posi­tions in industry and government, as well as in academia. The Graduate Center is also home to twenty-eight interdisciplinary research centers and institutes focused on areas of compelling social, civic, cultural, and scientific concerns. Located in a landmark Fifth Avenue building, The Graduate Center has become a vital part of New York City's intellectual and cultural life with its extensive array of public lectures, ex­hibitions, concerts, and theatrical events.