Public Theater Announces 'Paris Commune' Discussions

The Public Theater (Artistic Director Oskar Eustis; Executive Director Mara Manus) announced today that post-show discussions will follow performances of PARIS COMMUNE on Thursday, April 10 and Thursday, April 17. Both discussions will immediately follow 8 p.m. performances of PARIS COMMUNE and no additional tickets are necessary.
 
On April 10, historian Jerrold Seigel (Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830-1930) will discuss the time surrounding the Paris Commune of 1871 with the authors of PARIS COMMUNE, Steven Cosson and Michael Friedman. The discussion between Seigel, Cosson and Friedman will be moderated by art historian Tricia Paik and will be followed by a book-signing with Seigel.
 
On April 17, dramaturg Janice Paran will host a "Meet The Civilians" discussion with Cosson and Friedman. Since 2001, The Civilians have gained prominence and praise for their unique method of creating theater via a mixture of first-person accounts and inspired creativity. This discussion will take audience members through the process of how The Civilians create a show.
 
Tickets for PARIS COMMUNE are $10 and available by calling (212) 967-7555 or ordering online at www.publictheater.org.
 
Conceived and presented in association with LAByrinth Theater Company, PUBLIC LAB is designed to respond to new work immediately, and present fresh, raw and relevant plays that embrace the Public's history as a theater receptive to the big issues, the public issues of our time.  In so doing, this innovative program creates a new model for the ways in which The Public engages with our artists and audience.  This important initiative will give writers the essential opportunity to realize their work in collaboration with director, designers and actors through production and most importantly, to see their work in front of an audience.  The plays will be minimally designed and have short rehearsal periods. 
 
JERROLD SEIGEL is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of History Emeritus at New York University, where he taught from 1988 to 2006.  Before arriving at NYU he taught for twenty-five years at Princeton, where he received a Ph.D. in 1963.  He grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, attended public schools, and graduated from University City High School.  He received a B. A. in History and Literature magna cum laude from Harvard in 1958, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.  His first field of historical specialization was the Italian Renaissance, but since the 1970s he has concentrated chiefly on more recent topics, beginning with Marx's Fate: The Shape of a Life (Princeton University Press, 1978).  His next book, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830–1930 (Viking Penguin, 1986) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award in criticism. More recently he has written on The Private Worlds of Marcel Duchamp: Desire, Liberation, and the Self in Modern Culture (University of California Press, 1995), and on The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe Since the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2005).   His current project is "The Culture of Means: Modernity and Bourgeois Life."  He has held fellowships from the Fulbright Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation, and was twice a Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.  He has twice served as a visiting lecturer (maître d'études associé) at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, and in 2000 as a Resident at the American Academy in Rome.  A devoted amateur cellist, he lives in New York City with his wife, the flutist Jayn Rosenfeld, where he is a member of the New York Institute for the Humanities.
 
TRICIA PAIK is a Ph.D. candidate in art history at New York University. She recently concluded a five-year tenure as curatorial assistant at The Museum of Modern Art where she worked on exhibitions devoted to the art of two late 19th-century masters, Odilon Redon (fall 2005), and most recently, Georges Seurat (fall 2007). She has lectured at The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Morgan Library and Museum, and Christie's Education. She has also published reviews in Art on Paper.
 
THE CIVILIANS is an Obie- and Edinburgh Fringe First-winning company founded by Artistic Director Steven Cosson. Works are developed from creative investigations into real life and produced internationally. Canard, Canard, Goose?; Gone Missing; The Ladies; (I Am) Nobody's Lunch; This Beautiful City; and Paris Commune have appeared at theaters including A.R.T., Barrow Street, La Jolla Playhouse, Actors Theatre of Louisville, London's Soho, and many others.
 
STEVEN COSSON founded the Civilians in 2001. With the company: co-writer and director of This Beautiful City premiering at this year's Humana Festival with upcoming productions at Studio Theatre in D.C. and Center Theatre Group (Mark Taper Forum); writer/director of the long-running hit Gone Missing which was included in New York Times critic Charles Isherwood's Best of 2007 list; as well as (I Am) Nobody's Lunch, which won the 2006 Fringe First award at Edinburgh and was recently published by Oberon Books in the UK; and director of the company-created Canard, Canard, Goose?. The Civilians' work has been produced at A.R.T., Actors Theatre of Louisville, La Jolla Playhouse, HBO's Aspen Comedy Festival, London¹s Gate Theatre and Soho Theatre among many others. Cosson has directed and developed many new plays including Neal Bell's Shadow of Himself; Mat Smart's 13th of Paris; Tommy Smith's Air Conditioning, Anne Washburn's Communist Dracula Pageant, world premiere of Peter Morris' Square Root of Minus One; U.S. premiere of Martin Crimp's Attempts on Her Life, U.S. premiere of Sarah Kane's Phaedra's Love; also The Time of Your Life, Serious Money, The Importance of Being Earnest and Guys and Dolls. Steven has been a Fulbright Scholar in Colombia, a MacDowell Fellow, and Resident Director at New Dramatists.

Michael Friedman is a founding Associate Artist of The Civilians, and has been the Composer/lyricist for the company's productions This Beautiful City,  [I Am] Nobody's Lunch, Gone Missing,  and Canard, Canard, Goose? He also wrote music and lyrics for The Brand New Kid, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, which recently premiered at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles, God's Ear, which will be presented at the Vineyard Theater this Spring, The Blue Demon, which premiered at the Huntington Theatre, and the upcoming Saved, which will premiere at Playwrights Horizons in May. His work at the Public includes Satellites, Romeo and Juliet, Cymbeline, and The Seagull. His music has also been heard at New York Theatre Workshop, The Roundabout Theatre Co., Second Stage, Soho Rep, Theater for a New Audience, Signature, and The Acting Company, regionally at Hartford Stage, Humana Festival, ART, Berkeley Rep, Dallas Theatre Center, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Portland Center Stage, and internationally at London's Soho and Gate Theatres, and the Edinburgh Festival. He is an Artistic Associate at New York Theatre Workshop, a Princeton University Hodder Fellow, and a recipient of a MacDowell fellowship. He received a 2007 Obie award for sustained excellence.

THE PUBLIC THEATER (Artistic Director Oskar Eustis; Executive Director Mara Manus) was founded by Joseph Papp in 1954 as the Shakespeare Workshop and is now one of the nation's preeminent cultural institutions, producing new plays, musicals, productions of Shakespeare, and other classics at its headquarters on Lafayette Street and at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.  The Public's mandate to create a theater for all New Yorkers continues to this day on stage and through its extensive outreach and education programs. Each year, over 250,000 people attend Public Theater-related productions and events at six downtown stages, including Joe's Pub, and Shakespeare in the Park. The Public has won 40 Tony Awards, 141 Obies, 39 Drama Desk Awards, 23 Lucille Lortel Awards and 4 Pulitzer Prizes.

For more information please visit www.publictheatre.org