Milo Rau directs readings of Elfriede Jelinek’s new play, translated by Gitta Honegger
Monday 20 January 2025
New York City and Mossul
Democracy is in a serious crisis and people are confused. Elfriede Jelinek responded to Donald Trump’s second election victory with an important text: Endsieg, a grim sequel to Am Königsweg / The Burgher King, her play about the United States election eight years ago. Parallel readings in German and English.
There are so many cool Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) performance artists out there! Since this performance art season only had ten episodes to talk to artists directly, this last episode wraps up the season and goes through a whole bunch of other contemporary artists that hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson are excited about.
Hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson learn from Dr. Amir Al-Azraki about Iraqi theatrical traditions, the birth of modern Iraqi theatre springing from church drama in Mosul in the late nineteenth century, Iraqi plays in translation, and Afro-Iraqi theatre.
Hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson look at MENA and SWANA puppetry traditions with guest artivist Dr. Sarah Fahmy. They talk about her production of the first recorded full play in English of Ibn Daniyal, The Shadow Spirit; the Aragoz Puppet; and, coming more into current puppetry practice by MENA folks, Fahmy's own ecofeminist puppetry practice.
Ben Barson and Gizelxanath Rodriguez, part of the Afro Yaqui Music Collective, talk about artivism—what it means, what it can look like—in relation to building a jazz opera with various communities around the world.
For the last few years, professor Catherine Coray has been helping create collaboration opportunities for theatre artists in Arab countries and the Americas. Arab Voices: Stories of Palestine is the most recent iteration, and has taken place in New York, Abu Dhabi, and Beirut.
