Excerpts from four plays – Exile Is My Home, The Town with Very Nice People, House in a Boat with Food and No God, Crossings: A Play of Immigrant Voices – will be read on stage, followed by a discussion with the Romanian-born American author, Domnica Radulescu.
Exile Is My Home traces the eerie journey of Lina and Mina, a refugee couple from the Balkans who cross the galaxies as they travel from planet to planet in search of home and peace after having survived wars and atrocities. The planets represent different states of the world, both utopian and dystopian, from serene spheres of tolerance to nightmarish visions of a cataclysmic future. These worlds are also states of mind and consciousness, embodying our strongest desires and deepest fears. “Planet America” combines all of these ideas into an ambiguous space—both frightening and alluring, both hopeless and hopeful. The Town with Very Nice People: A Strident Immigrant Operetta is a satirical comedy of manners whose flamboyant heroine, Roxana, a Romanian writer living in a small Southern town full of bigotry, attempts to reform the town into a space of diversity and tolerance. House in a Boat with Food and No God is a dystopian, ecofeminist play that takes place on water and whose characters, the mother-daughter pair Nermina and Sinistra, struggle for survival while attempting to reinvent the world by piecing together the massacred body of the original Goddess, mother of the universe. Crossings: A Play of Immigrant Voices is dedicated to those who cross borders every day, to those who survive and persist, and to those who have perished (and continue to perish) in their strenuous crossings.
The plays were published in the anthology Exile Is My Home (2020).
Exile Is My Home, Romania. Playwright: Domnica Radulescu. Director: Rachel Tamarin. Cast: Steph Marie Alvarez, Jessica Carmona, Alexandra Gomez, Talia Segal, Ken LaBoy Vasquez, Selina Hernandez. Choreographer: Amy Frey. Music: Joshua Murphy, Alexander Tanson.
This event is not suitable for children under 16.
“Radulescu’s plays are carnivalesque, grotesquely comic, savagely sad, and breathtaking in their imaginative scope. They bound over oceans, continents, [and] planets, stifling small-town faculty meetings and the terrifying liminal spaces of the US border.”
Free and open to the public. Online registration through Eventbrite is required.
The 2022 Spring Stage Readings: Bridging the Worlds is dedicated to the people of Ukraine fighting for their independence. 🇺🇦 Suggested donation ($10) will be used to support Ukrainian refugees. All collected funds will be donated to People in Need, a Czech non-governmental, non-profit organization with over 20 years of experience in helping people in emergencies all over the world.
Proof of vaccination and wearing of a face mask during the event is required.
ABOUT
DOMNICA RADULESCU is an American writer of Romanian origin, living in the United States where she arrived in 1983 as a political refugee from the communist dictatorship of her native Romania. She settled in Chicago where she obtained a master’s degree in Comparative literature and a PhD in Romance Languages from the University of Chicago. She is the Edwin A. Morris Professor of Comparative Literature at Washington and Lee University. Radulescu is the author of three critically acclaimed novels, Train to Trieste (Knopf 2008 &2009), Black Sea Twilight (Transworld 2011 & 2012) and Country of Red Azaleas (Hachette 2016) and of award-winning plays. Train to Trieste has been published in thirteen languages and is the winner of the 2009 Library of Virginia Fiction Award. Radulescu received the 2011 Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. Radulescu also published fourteen non-fiction books, edited and co-edited collections on topics ranging from the tragic heroine in western literature to feminist comedy, to studies of exile literature to theater of war and exile, refugee art, and two collections of original plays. Two of her plays, Exile Is My Home and The Town with Very Nice People were runners up for the Jane Chambers Playwriting award in 2012 and 2013. Dream in a Suitcase. The Story of an immigrant Life is her first memoir, and it was released in January 2022. Radulescu is twice a Fulbright scholar and the founding director of the National Symposium of Theater in Academe.
RACHEL TAMARIN is a fourth-generation immigrant, fiercely proud of her Jewish identity. Rachel hopes to lend her artistic talents to contribute to her family's rich history as educators, influencers, healers, and activists. Recent directing credits include: Then & Now, Hedda Gabler, Water by the Spoonful, Stop Kiss, and Dead Man's Cell Phone with Red Monkey Theater Group, and looks forward to directing their upcoming production of Insignificant, by Sean Michael Welch, next season, and to playing Dorcas in their upcoming production of Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles, this June (tickets and info available at www.redmonkeytheater.org). You may also recognize her from onstage appearances as Fiona in Then & Now, Rachel Howells in Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual with RMTG/M&M PAC at Bartow-Pell Mansion and Stella in The Good Cop at The Davenport Theatre.
CAST
STEPH MARIE ALVAREZ grew up in San Francisco, California, as a first-generation Mexican American. She is an actress and writer. In 2012, she ventured into writing, producing and performing in an immigration play, Border Sweet Border, based off interviews with lawyers and immigrants from various countries. Through this artistic venture, she became a board member of the former Maura Clark Ita Ford Foundation. Steph is a proud member of Brazen Giant Ensemble. She is also a graduate of the One Year Conservatory at the Terry Schreiber Studio and Theatre, and she has a Bachelors in Communication Arts from Marymount Manhattan College.
JESSICA CARMONA is an award-winning Actress, playwright, educator and producer of Afro- Puerto Rican descent. She is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where she received her BFA in Acting. Most recently, she appeared on New Amsterdam (episode 409), and also starred as Rosie in the new play Pecking Order by Robin Rice, and as Zoe in Black Mexican by Rachel Lynette. Previously, she appeared as Odessa/Haikumom in Water by the Spoonful at the Red Monkey Theatre Company (directed by Rachel Tamarin), Antonio in Twelfth Night at the Red Monkey Theater Group (directed by Tal Aviezer), Samana in Platanos and Collard Greens, Maddie in Nickeled and Dimed at Blackfriars Theater. She has also worked with Pregones/PRTT and R.Evolucion Latina on a production of The Tempest. Her indie film, Millie and the Lords, won her the Best Film and Best Actress Award at The People’s Film Festival and the Viva Latino Film Festival.
ALEXANDRA GOMEZ is a Colombian actor, writer, director, singer, and producer. Together with Federico Mallet, she co-founded Quemocion in December 2020, a production company created by and for Latinx artists that seeks to empower the Latinx community's most overlooked voices. Recent theatre credits include: StartUp (SheNYC Fest August 2021), Terremoto (directed by; Kraine Theater October 2021) and Troilus and Cressida (co-directed by Barefoot Shakespeare 2020 Season).
TALIA SEGAL is a multi-hyphenate artist originally from the Washington, DC area. Recent credits: Fells Point Corner Theatre: Maricela De La Luz Lights the World (Ofelia/Ensemble), Capital Fringe Festival: Dreamer/Seeker (Brenda), Rockville Little Theatre: The Spitfire Grill (Effy Krayneck), Lo Notes Productions: Ponzi! The Musical (Rose Ponzi), Landless Theatre Company: A Christmas Story (Mother), Assassins (Squeaky Fromme), TSI Playtime Series: Being (Sordid). Upcoming: Her, Across the River at Rapid Lemon Productions. Talia has released five albums of original songs, which have been licensed to various film and television networks.
KENNETH LABOY VAZQUEZ, born and raised in Puerto Rico, now lives in Queens with his immensely supportive uncle. Kenneth was recently seen in Red Monkey's site-specific play Then & Now. He has also appeared in Sun & Sea at BAM, as well as Red Monkey's production of Water by the Spoonful, Elmwood Playhouse's Our Town, and as Larry in Studio Playhouse's Boys in the Band.
SELINA HERNANDEZ is a writer and performance artist who uses theatre arts, spoken word, and song in her work. The pieces she writes tend to focus on her life experiences as a Latina woman, a mother, and as a New Yorker. Selina was born and raised in New York City. Her recent projects include writing and publishing her first young children’s book: I Like Pink! A Story About Self-Acceptance inspired by her son and a film version of her poem Am I Buggin’, directed by Cathleen Campbell. She has studied and performed at LaGuardia HS of the Performing Arts, Hofstra University, and The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater. Some of her past projects include: being a cast member for the acclaimed 2018 Mile Long Opera at the High Line, writing and performing a series of monologues from an ongoing project entitled Pick A Struggle at JCAL (Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning) in March 2019, hosting a reading of her play The Holidays 101 at Taller Boricua Gallery, and being invited for the 4th consecutive year to have her poem featured in the 2021 installation of “Women in the Heights: Art in our Time” an exhibition featuring work by prominent female artists of Northern Manhattan.
AMY FREY is an occupational therapist and an alumna of Columbia University, Muhlenberg College, The Moscow Art Theatre (MXAT) and the Accademia Dell'Arte in Arezzo, Italy. She is an actor and playwright. Favorite roles include Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Neverwhere, meg jo beth amy & louisa, The Seagull, A Scandal in Bohemia, and many others. Her plays include Monster, Bluebeard's Wife and On the Eve (winner of the Bare Knuckle Theater Festival) as well as co-writing meg jo beth amy & louisa, (nominated for "Theater Unleashed" award at the Hollywood Fringe Festival). Her adaptations include Arthur Conan Doyle's A Scandal in Bohemia and Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles which will premiere at Bartow-Pell with Red Monkey Theater Group this year.
JOSHUA MURPHY is an actor and singer songwriter guitarist based in Brooklyn NY. In his roles and his songs, his heart and curiosity are always prominent. Be kind. Mind the doing. Be thorough. Go beyond the material. And always keep God in your heart.
THE 2022 SPRING STAGE READINGS
The 2022 Spring Stage Readings: Bridging the Worlds is organized by the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation and the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York, Untitled Theater Company #61, Consulate General of the Czech Republic in New York, GOH Productions, and Romanian Cultural Institute. The festival is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Spring Stage Readings is part of the Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival honoring the playwright and human rights activist Vaclav Havel.
The 2022 edition has been conceived in consultation with Attila Szabo, Deputy Director, Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute; Martina Peckova-Cerna, Head, International Cooperation Department, Arts and Theatre Institute, Prague; Tomek Smolarski, Performing Arts Programming, Polish Cultural Institute New York; Raluca Cimpoiasu, Program Manager, Romanian Cultural Institute; Vladislava Fekete, Director, Theatre Institute in Bratislava; and Andrea Domeova, Head of the Centre for Editorial Activities, Theatre Institute in Bratislava.