IVP CHICAGO: STORIES FROM AROUND THE WORLD
February 15, 2015 - March 2, 2015
International Voices Project (IVP) is proud to present the sixth season of play readings by playwrights from around the world. The series is presented in collaboration with consulates and cultural institutions throughout Chicago. The 2015 engagement's represented countries include India, Canada, Sweden, Cuba, Syria, Norway, Poland and Chile. A reception follows each evening's readings.
February 15: India
Gopal Sharman's Ramayana
Rama, the prince of Ayodha, is exiled to the forest, but after many adventures he discovers that his wife has been abducted by Ravana, the king of demons, and Rama needs the help of Hanuman and his army of monkeys to rescue her.
February 16: Canada
Daniel Maclovr's Best Brothers
A bittersweet comedy from one of Canada's most beloved playwrights that explores the many ways in which we grieve and the love we find in unexpected places. Bunny Best has met her unfortunate end after a mishap at a Gay Days parade. Now her two sons, Kyle and Hamilton, have the task of arranging her funeral and caring for her most beloved companion, a troublesome Italian greyhound named Enzo. In the bustle of obituary-writing, eulogy-giving, and dog-sitting, sibling rivalry quickly reaches its peak and years of buried contentions surface.
February 17: Sweden
Jonas Hassen Khemiri's We Are a Hundred
In Khemiri's third play we meet a trio of women: A young revolutionary, a middle-aged comfort junkie and an old truth seeker. Three persons who,in their fight to define themselves, realize that they are the same person. Join Jonas Hassen Khemiri's unpredictable world where everyone fights to define the meaning of the word "we."
February 22: Cuba
Laura Liz Gil Echenique's The Walruses
The essential desire to share genuine intimacy compels lovers to stumble toward one another in an eternal dance as basic as breathing, revealing that we can be as authentic as the rest of the creatures of the earth, who have much to teach us, if only we could listen.
February 23: Syria
Mohammad al-Attar's A Chance Encounter
Glimpse the human side of the current Syrian conflict through the unique artistic voice of this playwright, drama practitioner, and commentator who has been chronicling the rapid transformations taking place in his homeland since 2011. In Al-Attar's short play A Chance Encounter, a simple interaction on a Beirut street corner draws us into a mire of Syrian politics and alliances.
February 24: Norway
Arne Lygre's Nothing of Me
The new play is the story of a passion gradually convulsed by visiting ghosts from the past, and by the risk at which the characters are from one another. In a playful style Arne Lygre delves into the bond of love, its force and its dead-ends, using ruthlessly telltale dialogue. The play warns us of the danger we're at of imprisoning others within our expectations, through the very love we feel for them.
March 1: Poland
Dorota Maslowska's No Matter How Hard We Try
No Matter How Hard We Try is literary phenomenon Dorota Masłowska's hilarious and devastating portrait of a schizophrenic post-communist Polish society divided against itself, buried under the weight of history, and torn between national pride and shame. With wildly inventive language and razor-sharp humor the play captures Poland's contemporary moment bringing together nouveau-riche media celebrities, the abject poor, phony artists, and disaffected youth all struggling to stay afloat in a toxic stew of commercialism, intergenerational confusion, Catholic nationalism, and idealized visions of Poland's tragic past.
Victory Gardens Biograph Theater
2433 N. Lincoln Ave.
Chicago, IL 60614
http://www.choosechicago.com/event/IVP-Chicago-Stories-From-Around-the-World/26175/
