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STAGED READINGS
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THE TIME OF THE CHERRY SMOKE
By Katerina Rudcenkova
Translated by Heather Benes-McGadie
Directed by Cosmin Chivu
Cast:
MARIE- Rahti Gorfien
VALERIE- Mary Gorman
ANNA- Chelsea Miller
VOICE- Sam Eliad
Curator Marcy Arlin, Dramaturg Irena Kovarova
Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty battle with three unhappy, frustrated ordinary people.
Bohemian National Hall, New York City
The reading was produced by The Czech Center New York/ Immigrants' Theatre Project/Aura Pont/The Theatre Institute, Prague
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Cultural Responsibility and the Role of the Writer
Where: Segal Theater, CUNY Graduate Center: 365 Fifth Ave.
What time: 6:30–8 p.m.
With Alvis Hermanis, Moisés Kaufman, and Christopher Shinn; moderated by Kate Loewald . Excerpts directed by Cosmin Chivu.
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December 18, 2007
THE ART OF YIDDISH DRAMA:
MODERNITY CONFRONTS TRADITION
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue (at 34th Street)
*Indicates Member Actors Equity Association
Panelists discussed issues including:
• Are plays written by Yiddish playwrights Jewish plays?
• What influences do we see of non-Yiddish playwrights of the respective periods in Yiddish plays?
• Why aren't early 20th c/ Yiddish-language plays being done in mainstream theatres with nearly the frequency of turn of the 20th c/ plays from other languages?
• From a dramaturgical standpoint, how would you develop a script for a Yiddish play to bring it to life for contemporary audiences?
Presented in collaboration with the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
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THE ROMANIANS
By Lars Noren
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THE MISTRESSES
By Michael Weller
Directed by Cosmin Chivu
A staged reading of the play was produced at the Cherry Lane Theatre, as part of The Lincoln Center Directors Lab, in June 2005.
Cherry Lane Theatre and the Lincoln Center Directors Lab presented in June 2005 TEN BY TEN: a fast-paced event of ten exciting and diverse plays written by Cherry Lane Theatre’s community of playwrights and directed by LCT Directors Lab members. During rehearsals, the directors and actors worked in a close collaborative process with several well-known writers. Cosmin Chivu directed the Mistresses by Michael Weller.
Playwright Michael Weller’s first major stage success was Moon Children, originally presented under the title Cancer in London in 1970. Another success came with Loose Ends, which premiered in Washington D.C. in 1979. Weller was represented on Broadway with Spoils of War, which premiered in November, 1988. Other notable plays include Fishing, Split, The Ballad of Soapy Smith, and Ghost on Fire. Wellers work has been performed on and off-Broadway, and at many of the major repertory theatres in the US, including the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Mark Taper Forum, the Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf, Circle-in-the-Square, Seattle Repertory, La Jolla Playhouse, and the Second Stage, where he was Literary Advisor. In addition to playwriting, Weller has written the screen adaptations of Doctorows novel Ragtime, the musical hair, and the play Lost Angels, among others.
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WAXING WEST
By Saviana Stanescu
Directed by Cosmin Chivu
Produced by: Violetta Gyra
Stage Manager: Rob Tepper
Cast:
DANIELA- Violetta Gyra
MARCELA- Lelia Goldoni
ELVIS-Terry Maratos
CHARLIE- Michael Brainard
GLORIA- Stacey Martino
UROS-Carmen Argenziano
ELENA- Claudia Stedelin
CEAUSESCU- Paul Mackley
A staged reading of the play was presented in June 2006 at Friends & Artists Studio, Hollywood, CA
WAXING WEST (A hairy-tale in four seasons) is a comic drama that traverses back and forth between Romania and New York, between past and present, between "the American Dream" and the American nightmare.
A Romanian cosmetologist, Daniela, arrives in the USA as a soon-to-be bride in an arranged marriage planned by two over-protective mothers.
As Daniela seeks to adjust to the new life with Charlie, a sexually repressed computer engineer, she is haunted by the ghosts of Romania's former totalitarian leaders Elena and Nicolae Ceausescu- who appear to her as vaudevillea vampires whose goal is to make her life miserable.
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HOUND
By John Patrick Bray
Directed by Cosmin Chivu
Suggested by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of Baskervilles
With: Bob LaVelle, Nelson Avidon, Michael Gladis, Paul Weissman, Rock Kohli, Yevgeniy Dekhtyar, Dena Tyler, Courtney Tisch, Cyntia Segura, Bronwyn Steinberg, Matthew Hammond.
A reading of the play was presented at the New School For Drama Theater in August 2005
"It is clever, funny, moving in unexpected ways, and has a wonderful sense of mischief that (thankfully) never leaves the characters or dramatic situation high and dry, in that self-congratulatory way post-modern way. Doyle would bless the project, I'm sure."
George Toles, screenwriter for the Guy Maddin films The Saddest Music in the World, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, Careful, Archangel, and Tales From Gimli Hospital.
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PAPARAZZI
By Matei Visniec
Translated from French by Maria Vail Guevara
Directed by Cosmin Chivu
With: Yev Dekhtyar, Jason Griffin, Josh Iacovelli, Rock Kohli, Jennifer Malloy, Chris Page, Ben Rameaka, Dena Tyler, Chris Zonnas.
People living in the same neighborhood of a town are waiting for the sunrise, but the sun seems to be late. This might be the beginning of the end of the world. The play captures those hours of waiting, the people going on with their life, a bit intrigued but unable to comprehend the incomprehensible – the END. They fail to communicate with each other even in the 25th hour... Followed by the camera of two paparazzi, the humans - journalists, beggars, desperate women, blind people, stars, musician-criminals and criminal-musicians, clerks, astronomers, seniors - trigger hilarious and absurd situations. A reading of the play was presented at Actors Studio in April 2005.
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