Leila Buck News

Cleveland Public Theatre (CPT) is proud to present the world premiere of American Dreams. The production is onstage from February 8 - March 3, 2018, in CPT's James Levin Theatre.

Mosaic Theater Company of DCtakes its acclaimedVoices From a Changing Middle East Festival on tour this winter, bringing several of its seminal Festival productions (I SHALL NOT HATE, VIA DOLOROSA, and the recent film adaptation of WRESTLING JERUSALEM) to the University of Oklahoma, Grinnell College, and Eastern Mennonite University for presentations of each project, and culminating in a special evening at the University of Chicago's Logan Center for the Arts where excerpts from all three works will be shared in a single evening. The tour reflects different dimensions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the efforts to achieve reckoning and reconciliation through live performance and discussion, in works performed in English, Arabic, and Hebrew (with translated surtitles).

As previously announced, NYU Skirball will present a series of free events and post-show conversations with artists, writers, educators and Middle East experts, including the newly added Kathleen Chalfant, alongside Oskar Eustis, Tony Kushner, Jim Nicola and Alisa Solomon.

BRIC, the largest presenter of free cultural programming in Brooklyn, has announced the fall 2017 season at BRIC House, the organization's 40,000 SF home in Downtown Brooklyn.

Cleveland Public Theatre (CPT)'s Executive Artistic Director Raymond Bobgan announces the 2017/2018 season, which delivers on CPT's mission of raising consciousness and nurturing compassion through theatre that is daring, relevant and socially-conscious.

BREAK THE WALL (www.breakthewallproject.org), an open-access hybrid theatre/website theatre project addressing the Israel/Palestine conflict, officially launches on June 5, the 50th anniversary of the start of Israel's Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Roundabout Theatre Company and Columbia University School of the Arts have announced the winners of Columbia@Roundabout's 2017 New Play Reading Series.

Operas at the House, a showcase of three original operas inspired by the not-for-profit International House and each no longer than the traditional sit-com, will be performed Saturday, May 13 at 5 p.m. at NYU Tisch's Black Box Theater.  Co-sponsored by the Tisch Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program (GMTWP), International House, the NYU Tisch Department of Design for Stage & Film and American Opera Projects (AOP), Operas at the House is free with advance registration and open to the public. 

Difficult, but welcome discussions about race and representation continue to spread through the theatre landscape. Yesterday, a group of Middle Eastern and Muslim theater artists from Noor Theatre and elsewhere released a letter expressing concern about Playwrights Horizons' current production of Zayd Dohrn's THE PROFANE. Playwrights Horizons has responded today with a call for public discussion and further collaboration.

This year's Rough Draft Festival at LaGuardia Performing Arts features six new plays that are in the pre-production stage of development. Each of the plays has gone through readings and workshops in the past and the writers Melis Aker, Scott Barrow, Leila Buck, Kevin Doyle, Joey Merlo, Kyoung Park and their plays are ready for the next step.

Golden Thread Productions, the first American theatre company focused on the Middle East celebrating its 20th anniversary, is proud to announce the seven writers for its prestigious ReOrient 2017 Festival of Short Plays, selected through a competitive, international submission process.

TheatreSquared Artistic Director Robert Ford and Executive Director Martin Miller announced today a $250,000 grant from the Building Bridges Program of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Arts (DDFIA). This major, three-year grant will help TheatreSquared reimagine Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in contemporary Damascus, Syria, through a free adaptation that will be developed in collaboration with Syrian theatre director Kholoud Sawaf. The first phase of the project will be a three-week workshop presented as part of the five-play 2016 Arkansas New Play Festival, with staged reading performances at 7:00pm on June 17 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville and at 8:00pm on June 23 at TheatreSquared in Fayetteville (Walton Arts Center's Nadine Baum Studios). This reading is the first step towards a fully staged production as part of a future season.

Obie Award-winning Clare Barron (You Got Older, Page 73) joins playwrights Kara Corthron (AliceGraceAnon, Irondale Center); David Zellnik (Drama Desk nomination, Yank!, The York Theatre); Leila Buck (In the Crossing, Culture Project, Women's Center Stage); Laith Nakli (Shesh Yak, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater); directors Pirronne Yousefzadeh (That High and Lonesome Sound, Humana Festival of New American Plays); Carlos Armesto (Artistic Director, Theatre C); and actors Bobby Moreno (Lazarus, New York Theatre Workshop) and Aysan Celik (JUÁREZ, A Documentary Mythology, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater/Theater Mitu) for Noor Theatre's 2nd Annual 48 Hour Forum, 48 hour play festival inspired by news events of the day.

Mosaic bills Leila Buck's solo show as "a probing portrait of a cosmopolitan Lebanese matriarch as remembered by her Lebanese-American granddaughter who attempts to piece together her beloved Teta's story." Ms. Buck and her director Shana Gold were gracious enough to answer a few of my questions over email about the impetus for the show, the development process, and expectations for this highly anticipated production.

Noor Theatre is New York's only theatre representing voices of the Middle Eastern diaspora. They are often asked to respond to the barrage of news related to the Middle East and beyond. Often, news breaks and it is several years before we see something on stage about it. Such is the nature of theatre making.

Mosaic Theater Company of DC announces a one million dollar grant from The Reva and David Logan Foundation, spread over four years from 2016 through 2020. This gift affirms the resounding success of the company's inaugural season and ensures the sustainability of Mosaic Theater Company's mission to produce plays and complementary programming that speak to the most pressing issues of our time.

Mosaic Theater Company of DC's Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival continues this month with the world premiere of Motti Lerner's powerful new family drama, AFTER THE WAR, under the direction of his longtime collaborator Sinai Peter.

Mosaic Theater Company of DC's Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival continues this month with the world premiere of Motti Lerner's powerful new family drama, AFTER THE WAR, under the direction of his longtime collaborator Sinai Peter.

Mosaic Theater Company of DC announces the return of the critically acclaimed VOICES FROM A CHANGING MIDDLE EAST FESTIVAL, an expansive exhibition of some of the finest Israeli, Arab and American artists from across the country and around the world. The five offerings included in the 2015-16 Festival, which runs from today, January 6-May 1, 2016, grapple with issues of peace and conflict in a divided Middle East.

Mosaic Theater Company of DC announces the return of the critically acclaimed VOICES FROM A CHANGING MIDDLE EAST FESTIVAL, an expansive exhibition of some of the finest Israeli, Arab and American artists from across the country and around the world. The five offerings included in the 2015-16 Festival, which runs from January 6-May 1, 2016, grapple with issues of peace and conflict in a divided Middle East.