The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center presented SEGAL TALKS: Sahar Assaf (Lebanon); Dalia Basiouny & Laila Soliman (Egypt). livestreamed on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Monday 6 April 2020 at 9 a.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC-7) / 11 a.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC-5) / 12 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC-4) / 5 p.m. BST (London, UTC+1).
Join us for an update on the situation for theatre artists in the Arab world with Sahar Assaf (Lebanon); Jalila Baccar (Tunisia) (TBC); Dalia Basiouny & Laila Soliman (Egypt).
See the other archived videos that belong to the Segal Talks livestream series.
Bios
Sahar Assaf is an actress, stage director and Assistant Professor of Theatre at the American University of Beirut. She recently translated and directed Garcia-Lorca’s Blood Wedding as a site-specific performance and co-translated, co-directed and starred in Shakespeare’s King Lear. Sahar is a member of Lincoln Center Director’s Lab and the founder of Directors Lab Mediterranean, a sister Lab to Lincoln Center.
Jalila Baccar (TBC) is today generally recognized as one of the leading women playwrights and performers in Tunisia and the Arab world, and the work of her company Familia, co-directed by Baccar and her husband Fadhel Jaïbi, has attained a major international reputation. Baccar’s roles, acting and theatrical narratives, co-created by her director and husband Fadhel Jaïbi, are extremely intricate, psychologically multi-layered, and have the uncanny ability to capture the complexity and depth of grand themes prevalent in Arab societies. Baccar has performed in over twenty of her plays.
Dalia Basiouny is an Egyptian writer, theatre maker, activist, academic and translator. Her theatre work includes directing 20 plays performed in Egypt, England, USA, Morocco, Iraq, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and Germany. Basiouny’s theatre and academic work focuses on the role of women in theatre. She established “Sabeel for the Arts” in Cairo, 1997. This independent group promotes women’s work, explores non-traditional theatre settings, and new ways of telling women stories in theatre and on film.
Laila Soliman (born 1981) is an independent Egyptian theatre director, dramaturge and playwright, living and working in Cairo. Her works since 2004 have been mainly shown in Egypt, Tunis, Lebanon, Syria and in Europe. Soliman does not have a theatre company but instead people join in her projects as collaborators. She takes on various functions herself in support of her projects as required, including publicity, fundraising and set and costume design. Her works have been presented in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and various countries in Europe.
About SEGAL TALKS
“New Times need new Forms of Theatre.” Bertolt Brecht
New York, US, and international theatre artists, curators, researchers and academics will talk for one hour with Segal Center’s director Frank Hentschker about life and art in the Time of Corona and speak about challenges, sorrows, and hopes for the new Weltzustand— the State of the World.
A daily one-hour LIVE online talk from Monday to Friday — about making art and making sense in the Time of Corona
The newly introduced SEGAL TALKS are in English, ad-free and will be live-streaming on howlround.tv as well as on the Segal Center YouTube Channel. Each session will be archived on both platforms, and will raise money for a theatre artist or a company. In collaboration with HowlRound Theatre Commons, based at Emerson College.
Viewers can submit questions during the live session at: [email protected]
The second weekly program, starting Monday, April 6, 2020, will feature:
Laila Soliman & Dalia Basiouny (Egypt), Sahar Assaf (Lebanon), Jalila Baccar (Tunisia, TBC); Tung-Yen & Wu-Kang Chen (Taiwan); Lucia Calamaro, Graziano Graziani, Valeria Orani (Italy); Meredith Monk (New York, US); Aristide Tarnagda (Burkina Faso).
Participants from week one included: Taylor Mac & Kristin Martin (New York); Mok Chiu Yu (Hong Kong) + Hanchen Feng, Shuyi Liao (China); Thomas Ostermeier (Germany); Marco Martinelli & Ermanna Montanari, Teatro delle Albe (Italy); Toshiki Okada (Japan).
SEGAL TALKS was conceived, created and curated by Frank Hentschker in March 2020.
SEGAL TALKS has been made possible by the support of Susan and Jack Rudin(†), the Hearst Foundation, and Marvin Carlson, Sidney E. Cohn Chair, The Graduate Center CUNY.
For more information on the SEGAL TALKS, please visit www.theSegalCenter.org
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