Новая драма: Две пьесы 33-летней Рут Марграф (США) завершают сезон читок Американского культурного центра в Москве

33-летняя Рут Марграф, драматург и перформер из США, представит в Москве две свои пьесы; ее перформансы завершают первый сезон читок Американского культурного центра в Москве. «Судий, 19: черная пыль в легких» (Judges 19 Black Lungs Exhaling, 2000) — драматическая основа экспериментальной оперы, музыку к которой написал композитор Никос Бриско; он также прибудет в Москву для представления пьесы. Политический гротеск «Красные жабы» (Red Frogs, 2000) — версия «Лягушек» Аристофана. Программа читок новых американских пьес в Москве начата Американским культурным центром в феврале 2002 года, ее бессменный куратор — Рэйчел Перлметер, аспирантка программы «Фулбрайт».   Ранее, весной 2000 г., подобную программу ежемесячных читок начинал Британский Совет, сосед АКЦ по зданию Библиотеки иностранной литературы. С 1993 года, когда АКЦ начал работать в Москве, его основные проекты были связаны с библиотечной и образовательной поддержкой; директор АКЦ Мариса Фьюшиль сообщает, что центр продолжит программу читок в новом сезоне.

Начало показов 23 и 25 июля 2002 — в 19.00. Адрес Американского культурного центра в Москве — Николоямская ул., д. 1 (в здании Библиотеки иностранной литературы, Большой зал, м. «Китай-город», «Таганская»).

Ниже — официальная информация Американского культурного центра о пьесах, авторе, участниках читок:

Red Frogs
A Slapstick Mirror for the Summer Purgatorio
by Ruth Margraff

July 25 at 7:00 pm 
Bolshoi Zal, Library of Foreign Literature

The Contemporary American Play Reading Series:

This presentation of Ruth Margraff's RED FROGS, marks the culmination of the first season of a new reading series. The goal of the series is to present compelling new work by young writers and major plays by established writers who have yet to appear in Russian translation. Our hope is that the plays themselves will challenge and invigorate the dialogue between theatre artists in the United States and Russia, perhaps culminating in new translations and productions of these works. For more information about the series or the play, contact the Series Curator, Rachel Perlmeter, at rperlmeter@yahoo.com.

RED FROGS

A futuristic satire inspired by Aristophanes' FROGS. Set in an upheaving tidal wave between the grit of Coney Island carousels and the Nantucket Island bourgeoisie. A typhoon of working girls land on the doorstep of the summer home of the queen of all media tycoons. Highly theatrical and shamelessly burlesque, the play is written in raw poetic ironies built into the glass ceilings of grandiose American imagineering and opportunism. A vibrant snapshot of class and sex in America today and a “ruthless critique of everything existing“ (so far). Red Frogs draws on the physical stances and glances of burlesque and commedia dell' arte, with slapstick floggings of the real sublime. As if Chaplin himself were in female drag softshoe. It romps in farcical swinging doorways with a daredevil surreality in this radical departure from conventional American realism.

Aaron Lichter's review for nytheatre.com noted: “Like Dionysus [in Aristophanes' FROGS] media tycoon Beatifica Strata (a kind of Oprah/Martha Stewart composite) journeys to the depths of hell, or in this case Coney Island┘ she returns to her heavenly residence- Nantucket- followed by three „aquarium trash” gals, who apparently travel by typhoon (perhaps a Coney Island cyclone). From here, the girls infiltrate the household, and launch a Marxist revolution, but one that borrows as much from Groucho as from Karl.”

RED FROGS was commissioned by Performance Space 122 with funds provided by the Jerome Foundation and NYSCA/Lower Manhattan Cultural Center. RED FROGS previewed in the 2000 Los Angeles Common Ground Festival/ASK and with Bottom's Dream Theater/Edge of the World Theater Festival this October to critical acclaim (Los Angeles). RED FROGS premiered with Hourglass Group director Elyse Singer at PS122 February 28-March 24, 2002(New York).
The Playwright: Ruth Margraff

Ruth Margraff's most recent original work in new opera includes NIGHT VISION: A NEW THIRD TO FIRST WORLD VAMPYRE OPERA written with composer/baritone saxophonist Fred Ho. NIGHT VISION was commissioned by two Multi-Arts Project grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, and was awarded production funding from the Jerome Foundation, the NEA and NYSCA for its premiere at HERE Arts in February, 2000 in New York. Ruth also co-wrote ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINESE AMERICA┘A MARTIAL ARTS BALLET with Fred Ho, which was shown as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's 2001 Next Wave Festival in November, 2001, and at many other venues.

Ruth is co-founder of HERE Arts Center's “Opera Project” in New York where she is currently a member HARP artist and where she wrote THE CRY PITCH CARROLLS with composer/violinist Matthew as featured at the 1999 Village Voice/Obie Awards. An Austin production of THE CRY PITCH CARROLLS at Salvage Vanguard Theater was nominated for 7 Austin Critics CircleAwards and 4 nominations for the 1999 B.  Iden Payne Awards including “Outstanding Musical” last year. Salvage Vanguard's recent remounting of WALLPAPER PSALM was nominated for 8 Austin Critic's Circle Awards including “Best New Opera.”

Ruth's other works include THE ELEKTRA FUGUES, CENTAUR BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO, WALLPAPER PSALM, EXOTICA ORANGE, BACK OF THE DOLLAR LATIN, LOCKET ARIAS, GAT HIM TO HIS PLACE, ALL THOSE VIOLENT SWEATERS, FLAGS UNFURLED: 1976, WHEN THE PIE WAS OPEN, VINYL PRESSINGS etc. and have been commissioned, developed and produced mostly in New York by Joseph Papp's Public Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Cooper Union Grand Hall, Lincoln Center Outdoors & Bang-On-A-Can Festival, HERE Arts, the Kitchen, New York Theater Workshop, the Guggenheim Museum, JVC Jazz Festival/John Harms Center for the Arts, La Mama Galleria, Dance Theater Workshop, Hourglass Group@Gershwin Hotel and PS122, New Georges, GAle GAtes Company, Mabou Mines, Drama League, Poetry Project, Dixon Place@Vineyard, Mac Wellman Festival, Knitting Factory, Ohio Theater, Greenwich Street, Medicine Show, Brooklyn College, Columbia University, etc┘

Ruth has taught literature, literacy, creative writing and socio-political theory at St. Joseph's College and Long Island University in Fort Green and Crown Heights, Brooklyn. She is one of Paula Vogel's MFA playwright's workshop graduates from Brown University and a tenure-track assistant professor of Playwriting at the University of Texas at Austin/Michener Center for Writers. Ruth is currently on leave from UT to serve as Visiting Associate Professor of Playwriting at Brown University and is also a Visiting Professor in playwriting this spring at the Yale School of Drama.

Guest Artist: Nikos Brisco

Nikos Brisco first caught attention in '89-'90 in Deep Ellum, Dallas, TX, as the singer/songwriter — front man for the postmodern country band “Fever in the Funkhouse“. Voted „Best Act Overall” in '91 (Dallas Observer). Throughout his career this singer/songwriter, composer, actor has shown great depths of creativity and diversity in creating several different bands to house his music. Plato's Kave, a world music ensemble that explores neo-Pythagorean ideas of music with traditional instruments mixed with electric and modern western songwriting styles. It was in Plato's Kave that he first began musical exploration into his Greek roots, composing and performing on bouzouki as well as guitar. His latest band is Black Lung formed with Ruth Margraff, the nationally known avant-garde playwright and playwriting professor at Brown University. Brisco's mastery of composition in the American folk idiom combined with Margraff's poetic lyric has put them at the forefront of the avant-garde new opera movement.

As a solo artist Nikos has recorded and toured extensively sharing the bill with legendary songwriters like Townes Van Zandt, who he opened for in '92 at the prestigious McCabe's Guitar Store in Santa Monica, California and Jimmie Dale Gilmore in '99 at Caravan of Dreams in Ft. Worth. Throughout the 90's his band's performed with classic heavy hitters like Tears for Fears, Hot Tuna, Lou Ann Barton and the New Bohemians. In '92 he recorded his first solo album'Pluto' with critically acclaimed gypsy- jazz ensemble'Cafe Noir.'

Nikos is currently living in Astoria in the borough of Queens, where he performs regionally and tours nationally as a singer/songwriter. He has worked off- Broadway as both an actor and composer. He created roles and music for the Undermain Theatre at Here Arts Center's American Living Room Festival in Erik Ehn's'Gold into Mud' and at The Ohio Theatre in Ehn's'Swedish Tales of Woe". Nikos received a T. C. G. International Travel Grant this summer for Black Lung's tour to the Balkans. He has also been awarded performance support from the Queens Borough Library's New American's for his new work “A Carnation For The Sun“ with Turkish singer Ali Erenus. This new work will be a musical collage of the poetry of Ali's father famous Turkish poet Mustak Erenus. Mustak is a great and legendary poet in Turkey and virtually unknown to the English-speaking world and is dying of Alzheimer's disease.

Nikos has just finished recording his next studio album „GREEK/TEXAN” in Austin, TX, with producers Kevin Johnson and Nicholas Dotin (Panic Choir, The Wild Blooms). The album draws on his roots as a folk songwriter, touching the classic Texas vision of lyric and grit with a Mediterranean blue grass feel by incorporating Greek folk instruments like the bouzouki and darbek with the traditional Americana sounds of acoustic guitar, harmonica, accordion and the folk spirit of Irish drum accents.


** Margraff and Brisco's travel was partially funded by generous grants from the Public Affairs Section of the U. S. Embassy in Moscow and Arts International. Many thanks go to Marisa Fushille and the American Center for making their Moscow appearances possible.

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Judges 19: Black Lung Exhaling
Libretto by Ruth Margraff
Composed by Nikos Brisco

July 23 at 7:00 pm 
Bolshoi Zal, Library of Foreign Literature

The Contemporary American Play Reading Series:

This performance of JUDGES 19 by its creators, together with the upcoming reading of Ruth Margraff's RED FROGS, marks the culmination of the first season of a new reading series. The goal of the series is to present compelling new work by young writers and major plays by established writers who have yet to appear in Russian translation. Our hope is that the plays themselves will challenge and invigorate the dialogue between theatre artists in the United States and Russia, perhaps culminating in new translations and productions of these works. For more information about the series or the play, please contact the Series Curator, Rachel Perlmeter, at rperlmeter@yahoo.com.

JUDGES 19: BLACK LUNG EXHALING

The topic of this play is taken from the seventh biblical Book of Judges, which is characterized by brutal scenes. In the 19th Chapter of this book there is a story about a nameless Levite who marries his Concubine. She commits adultery, then survives multiple rapes and is horribly mutilated into twelve pieces by the sword of her master- her body pieces are strewn throughout Israeli land. “┘In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges, 17:06). This biblical story is combined with the story of miners from West Virginia and the destiny of a middle-aged Pearl, who drinks herself into oblivion due to a series of beloved-but-absent Marlboro Men. Pearl was Margraff's aunt, who died when her lungs collapsed during a coma in 1996. The Dallas Morning News observed: “these are Bible-quoting Appalaichian folk. He's a new-made preacher who hasn't lost his penchant for lust. She's a coal miner's daughter who knows her way around men too well.”

JUDGES 19 premiered at the Austin, TX Frontera Fest 2000, directed by Katherine Owens. The Austin Chronicle called it «an album-length play… hypnotic… brutal…a baptism of fire.» The show had an extended run in Dallas, TX, at the award winning Undermain Theatre where The Dallas Observer called it «a series of ballads whose instrumental simplicity contrasts with its ornate lyrical intensity…the thickly textured imagery and wordplay possesses enough frissons for a full novel written in verse… in this potently hewn piece of rural American mythology.» JUDGES 19 has also been presented at Here Arts Center in New York City. Margraff and Brisco toured the Balkans in the summer of 2001, where JUDGES 19 was staged at the Sazvezde Belef Constellation 2001-Beogradski Letnji Festival 2001 at the Konak Knjeginje Ljubice (The House of Countess Ljubica Museum) in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. The piece had a full run in March of 2002 at Perishable Theatre in Providence, Rhode Island, and will be seen again in the fall of 2002 at Here Arts Center in New York.

The Librettist: Ruth Margraff (the Concubine)

Ruth Margraff's most recent original work in new opera includes NIGHT VISION: A NEW THIRD TO FIRST WORLD VAMPYRE OPERA written with composer/baritone saxophonist Fred Ho. NIGHT VISION was commissioned by two Multi-Arts Project grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, and was awarded production funding from the Jerome Foundation, the NEA and NYSCA for its premiere at HERE Arts in February, 2000 in New York. Ruth also co-wrote ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINESE AMERICA┘A MARTIAL ARTS BALLET with Fred Ho, which was shown as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's 2001 Next Wave Festival in November, 2001, and at many other venues.

Ruth is co-founder of HERE Arts Center's “Opera Project” in New York where she is currently a member HARP artist and where she wrote THE CRY PITCH CARROLLS with composer/violinist Matthew as featured at the 1999 Village Voice/Obie Awards. An Austin production of THE CRY PITCH CARROLLS at Salvage Vanguard Theater was nominated for 7 Austin Critics Circle Awards and 4 nominations for the 1999 B.  Iden Payne Awards including “Outstanding Musical” last year. Salvage Vanguard's recent remounting of WALLPAPER PSALM was nominated for 8 Austin Critic's Circle Awards including “Best New Opera.”

Ruth's other works include THE ELEKTRA FUGUES, CENTAUR BATTLE OF SAN JACINTO, WALLPAPER PSALM, EXOTICA ORANGE, BACK OF THE DOLLAR LATIN, LOCKET ARIAS, GAT HIM TO HIS PLACE, ALL THOSE VIOLENT SWEATERS, FLAGS UNFURLED: 1976, WHEN THE PIE WAS OPEN, VINYL PRESSINGS etc. and have been commissioned, developed and produced mostly in New York by Joseph Papp's Public Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Cooper Union Grand Hall, Lincoln Center Outdoors & Bang-On-A-Can Festival, HERE Arts, the Kitchen, New York Theater Workshop, the Guggenheim Museum, JVC Jazz Festival/John Harms Center for the Arts, La Mama Galleria, Dance Theater Workshop, Hourglass Group@Gershwin Hotel and PS122, New Georges, GAle GAtes Company, Mabou Mines, Drama League, Poetry Project, Dixon Place@Vineyard, Mac Wellman Festival, Knitting Factory, Ohio Theater, Greenwich Street, Medicine Show, Brooklyn College, Columbia University, etc┘

Ruth has taught literature, literacy, creative writing and socio-political theory at St. Joseph's College and Long Island University in Fort Green and Crown Heights, Brooklyn. She is one of Paula Vogel's MFA playwright's workshop graduates from Brown University and a tenure-track assistant professor of Playwriting at the University of Texas at Austin/Michener Center for Writers. Ruth is currently on leave from UT to serve as Visiting Associate Professor of Playwriting at Brown University and is also a Visiting Professor in playwriting this spring at the Yale School of Drama.

The Composer: Nikos Brisco (the Levite)

Nikos Brisco first caught attention in '89-'90 in Deep Ellum, Dallas, TX, as the singer/songwriter — front man for the postmodern country band “Fever in the Funkhouse.“ Voted „Best Act Overall” in '91 (Dallas Observer). Throughout his career this singer/songwriter, composer, actor has shown great depths of creativity and diversity in creating several different bands to house his music. Plato's Kave, a world music ensemble that explores neo-Pythagorean ideas of music with traditional instruments mixed with electric and modern western songwriting styles. It was in Plato's Kave that he first began musical exploration into his Greek roots, composing and performing on bouzouki as well as guitar. His latest band is Black Lung formed with Ruth Margraff, the nationally known avant-garde playwright and playwriting professor at Brown University. Brisco's mastery of composition in the American folk idiom combined with Margraff's poetic lyric has put them at the forefront of the avant-garde new opera movement.

As a solo artist Nikos has recorded and toured extensively sharing the bill with legendary songwriters like Townes Van Zandt, who he opened for in '92 at the prestigious McCabe's Guitar Store in Santa Monica, California and Jimmie Dale Gilmore in '99 at Caravan of Dreams in Ft. Worth. Throughout the 90's his band's performed with classic heavy hitters like Tears for Fears, Hot Tuna, Lou Ann Barton and the New Bohemians. In '92 he recorded his first solo album'Pluto' with critically acclaimed gypsy- jazz ensemble'Cafe Noir'.

Nikos is currently living in Astoria in the borough of Queens, where he performs regionally and tours nationally as a singer/songwriter. He has worked off- Broadway as both an actor and composer. He created roles and music for the Undermain Theatre at Here Arts Center's American Living Room Festival in Erik Ehn, s 'Gold into Mud' and at The Ohio Theatre in Ehn's'Swedish Tales of Woe". Nikos received a T. C. G. International Travel Grant this summer for Black Lung's tour to the Balkans. He has also been awarded performance support from the Queens Borough Library's New American's for his new work “A Carnation For The Sun“ with Turkish singer Ali Erenus. This new work will be a musical collage of the poetry of Ali's father famous Turkish poet Mustak Erenus. Mustak is a great and legendary poet in Turkey and virtually unknown to the English-speaking world and is dying of Alzheimer's disease.

Nikos has just finished recording his next studio album „GREEK/TEXAN” in Austin, TX, with producers Kevin Johnson and Nicholas Dotin (Panic Choir, The Wild Blooms). The album draws on his roots as a folk songwriter, touching the classic Texas vision of lyric and grit with a Mediterranean blue grass feel by incorporating Greek folk instruments like the bouzouki and darbek with the traditional Americana sounds of acoustic guitar, harmonica, accordion and the folk spirit of Irish drum accents.

** Margraff and Brisco's travel was partially funded by generous grants from the Public Affairs Section of the U. S. Embassy in Moscow and Arts International. Many thanks go to Marisa Fushille and the American Center for making their Moscow appearances possible.
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