Carnegie Mellon School of Drama Hosts Alumna Dagmara Dominczyk Today

The School of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University is sponsoring "A Conversation With Dagmara Dominczyk" from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m., today, Feb. 28, in the Rauh Theater of the Purnell Center for the Arts. Professor of Drama Barbara Mackenzie-Wood will lead the discussion, which is free and open to the public.

Dominczyk, a 1998 graduate of the School of Drama, is an actress and author of "The Lullaby of Polish Girls," a novel loosely based on her youth in her native Poland. She will sign copies of her book in the Purnell Center lobby following the discussion.

Domincyzk has worked on Broadway, in films and on television; most recently she was in the Broadway revival of "Golden Boy." She turned to writing because she was inspired by her parents' political history and her family's immigrant story. In 1981, when Martial Law was declared in Poland, Dominczyk's father, a founding member of the workers' union Solidarity, was imprisoned. She and her family were deported to the United States in 1982, arriving in Brooklyn with only two suitcases in hand.

"Lullaby" chronicles some of that history and focuses on the friendship of three women from their youth in a small Polish town in the 1980s to their complicated adult lives. A murder that reaches across oceans brings them back together long after they've left home.

Carnegie Mellon (www.cmu.edu) is a private, internationally ranked research university with programs in areas ranging from science, technology and business, to public policy, the humanities and the arts. More than 12,000 students in the university's seven schools and colleges benefit from a small student-to-faculty ratio and an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. A global university, Carnegie Mellon's main campus in the United States is in Pittsburgh, Pa. It has campuses in California's Silicon Valley and Qatar, and programs in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and Mexico.