La MaMa Sets European Young Directors' Forum Workshops and Panels, 12/3 & 4

On December 3 and 4, La MaMa will hold a two-day series of conversations, workshops and panels to accompany the two productions of its European Young Directors' Forum. Participants will include European directors Bojan Djordjev (Serbia/Croatia), Paul Knieriem (The Netherlands), Bastian Kraft (Germany), Ana Tomovic (Serbia) and U.S. based directors Anne Bogart, Meiyin Wang, John Jesurun and Charlotte Braithwaite.

These events are held in conjunction with two mainstage productions: Serbian National Theatre in "The Doll Ship" November 29 to December 2 and Zagreb Youth Theatre of Croatia in "A Letter to Heiner Müller" December 6 to 9.

The December 3 and 4 panels and workshops will be held in La MaMa's Great Jones Studios, 47 Great Jones Street. Admission is free but space is limited. For reservations go to http://lamama.org/forum/ or call (212) 475-7710.

Both mainstage productions are in La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theater, 66 East Fourth Street. Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 PM and Sundays at 2:30 PM. Tickets are $25 general admission and $20 seniors and students. For tickets got to the La MaMa box office at 74A East Fourth Street, visit www.lamama.org or call (212) 475-7710.

European Young Director's Forum is collaboration between La MaMa and European Theatre Convention with support from The Trust For Mutual Understanding and the European Commission.

CONVERSATIONS, WORKSHOPS AND PANELS

MONDAY, DECEMBER 3
10:00 AM: Workshop with director Paul Knieriem (The Netherlands)
1:30 PM: Complimentary lunch buffet
3:00 PM: Panel: Theater making in the US & Europe – Building Bridges
Panelists: Anne Bogart, Paul Knieriem, Ana Tomovic and Meiyin Wang

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 4
3:00 PM: Discussion on theatre making in Germany – with director Bastian Kraft
6:00 PM: Panel: Stage Directing – New Tools / New Technologies
Panelists: John Jesurun, Bastian Kraft, Bojan Djordjev and Charlotte Braithwaite
8:00 PM: Reception

BIOGRAPHIES OF PARTICIPATING EUROPEAN DIRECTORS

Bojan Djordjev
Born in 1977 in Belgrade, Bojan Djordjev graduated in theatre directing in 2001 and arts and media theory in 2007. As an author, director and performer he has worked with numerous Theatre Projects in Belgrade, Stuttgart, Vienna, Lyon and Gent. He is the co-founder of TkH (Walking Theory) platform and journal for performing arts theory 2001 (www.tkh-generator.net). He has been an Artist in Residence at Akademie Schloss Solitude in 2004 and 2005/06 and at Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers, Paris within the TkH project "How to do Things by Theory" in 2010.

Paul Knieriem
Paul Knieriem (1981) graduated from the Theatre School Amsterdam in 2007 as a stage director. He did his internships at the Muenchner Kammerspiele and Toneelgroep Amsterdam. He was the co-founder of INSTED (which connects young directors) and he was involved in the development of the theatre-music group Circus Treurdier. Since his graduation, he's been working as a stage director for different companies such as the Toneelmakerij (My Mother Medea), Zeelandia, de Parade, Bellevue, Via Rudolphi and de Toneelschuur. He directed classic plays by Buechner ("Leonce and Lena"), Strindberg ("Dreamplay"), Bernhard, Shakespeare and Checkhov and also new Dutch playwrights including Rob de Graaf, Paul Pourveur, Willem de Vlam and Magne van de Bergh. In the summer of 2010, he directed a show in the Gaza Strip with Theatre Day Productions to an audience of 100,000. Since 2012, aside from his freelance career, he's been part of the artistic board of the youth-company "de Toneelmakerij." His adaptation of Thomas Bernhard's "Am Ziel" was selected for the prestigious Dutch Theatre Festival 2012.

Bastian Kraft
Bastian Kraft was born in 1980 and directed his first performances during his studies of Applied Theatre Sciences at the University of Gießen, Germany, where he graduated as a director with the staging of Marguerite Duras' "The Malady of Death." He then worked for three seasons at the Burgtheater Wien as director's assistant, where he staged Oscar Wilde's "DorIan Grey" in 2010. With his performance "America" by Franz Kafka at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, he was awarded the public's award of the festival 'radicaljung' organized by the Volkstheater Munich in 2010. In Hamburg at the Thalia Theater he staged the world premiere of Helene Hegemanns "Axolot Roadkill" in 2010 and Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" in 2011. He staged several works in Austria at the Schauspielhaus Wien and at the Schauspielhaus Graz ("Werther" after Goethe 2010), and in Germany at the Volkstheater Munich (Thomas Mann's "Felix Krull" 2010), Schauspiel Frankfurt (Schnitzler's "Dream Story" 2011), Deutsches Theater Berlin (Max Frisch's "Biography, A Game" 2012) and in Switzerland at the Schauspielhaus Zürich (Herman Hesse's "Steppenwolf" 2012).

Ana Tomovic
Born in 1979, in Belgrad, she attended the Philology Grammar School. She graduated from the Belgrade Faculty of Drama Arts, Department of Theatre and Radio Directing, in the class of Prof. Egon Savin and his assistant Dusan Petrovic. She directed "Creeps" by Luz Hibner in the Belgrade Drama Theatre (2004); "Golden Angle" (an omnibus project Belgrade Stories 4) by Ljubinka Stcjanovic in the Students' Cultural Centre (2000); "Duck" by Stella Feehily in the Kraljevo Thetre (2005); "halFlajfby Filip Vujosevic" in Atelier 212 (2005); "Casanova's Return" by Arthur Schnitzler (dramatization of the novel) in the Serbian National Theatre (2007) and "o Go My Man" by Stella Feehily in The National Theatre of Sombor (2007). She took part in the Joakimfest and in the Tenth Yugoslav Festival in Uzlce, in 2005, with the play "Duck" and in the Sterija Festival in 2006 with the play "halFlajf." She won the Best Director award in the Joakimfest 2005 for "Duck." From 1998 to 2005, she was an editor of the BITEF Bulletin. She was awarded the Goethe Institute scholarship for a residency at the International Forum of Young Theatre Creators in Berlin. In May 2006, she worked for the theatre festival Theatertreffen.

PERFORMANCES OF EUROPEAN YOUNG DIRECTORS' FORUM

Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 PM, Sundays at 2:30 PM. Tickets are $25 general admission and $20 seniors and students. For tickets got to the La MaMa box office at 74A East Fourth Street, visit www.lamama.org or call (212) 475-7710.

NOVEMBER 29 TO DECEMBER 2
"THE DOLL SHIP" FROM SERBIAN National Theatre
Ellen Stewart THEATER, 66 E. 4th STREET
NY premiere of "The Doll Ship," mounted by the Serbian National Theatre in 2009, a play that renders the life of a woman artist, from childhood to old age, through an archetypal string of classic fairy tales. It won the Sterija Prize for the Best Play Production and the Critics' Round Table Award at the 54th Sterijino Pozorje Theatre Festival held in Novi Sad, Serbia, that year.
This play will be the introductory event of La MaMa's European Young Directors Forum, a series of productions, panels and workshops which also includes "A Letter to Heiner Müller" by Zagreb Youth Theatre of Croatia December 6 to 9. Both plays will be presented in La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theater, 66 East Fourth Street. Between these two productions, there will be a series of panels and workshops December 2 to 4 in La MaMa's rehearsal studios, 47 Great Jones Street.

COMPLETE INFO: http://www.jsnyc.com/season/doll_ship.htm

DECEMBER 6 TO 9
ZAGREB YOUTH THEATRE OF CROATIA IN "A LETTER TO HEINER MÜLLER"
Ellen Stewart THEATER, 66 E. 4th STREET
In the La MaMa return of Zagreb Youth Theatre of Croatia, a man plans and delivers a speech--a letter to the late activist playwright Heiner Müller--within the highly controlled and monitored space of Berlin's Tegel Airport. The play, "A Letter to Heiner Müller" (Pismo Henieru Mülleru), reflects the discomfort of living in strictly controlled conditions, where locations like a hotel, metro, street or office are places of modern control and fear. Written by Goran Fercec (Croatia), directed by Bojan Djordjev (Serbia), the piece is performed by three actors, who roam from one control point to another in today's reality like Kafka's Josef K. The piece is performed mostly in English with occasional subtitles. Zagreb Youth Theatre is one of Europe's leading cutting-edge ensembles, whose last La MaMa production was described by Time Out as "a theatrical punch to the gut."

COMPLETE INFO: http://www.jsnyc.com/season/heiner_mueller.htm