Echoes of Hamlet in SF
Jan. 6-Feb. 19, Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Repertory Theatre and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival team up to present Ghost Light--Jonathan Moscone and Tony Taccone's new play about a man who stages Hamlet and in the process confronts his own father's assassination. For more details, click here.
The Convert at Princeton U
Jan. 13-Feb. 12, Princeton, NJ: McCarter Theatre premieres Danai Gurira's The Convert, about Westernization in 19th-century Rhodesia. Click here for more info.
Mamet's Race in Chicago
Jan. 14-Feb. 19, Chicago, IL: David Mamet's Race comes to Chicago's Goodman Theatre; a black lawyer and a white lawyer who are called upon to defend a wealthy, white client. Click here for more details.
As You Like It Goes Public
Jan. 19-Feb. 19, Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh Public Theater presents Shakespeare’s As You Like It, which features the courtship of Orlando and Rosalind. Click here for more details.
The Gaming Table in DC
Jan. 24-Mar. 4, Washington, DC: Folger Theatre presents The Gaming Table, by eighteenth-century dramatist Susanna Centlivre. Full of whimsy, wit, and wordplay, the work centers on a widow who holds a nightly card game. Click here for more info.
Romeo and Juliet at UCF
Jan. 25-Mar. 17, Orlando, FL: In partnership with the University of Central Florida, Orlando Shakespeare Theater stages the Bard's most famous romance, Romeo and Juliet. For more info, click here.
The Bard in Brooklyn
Jan. 27-Feb. 26, Brooklyn, NY: The upstart Truffle Theatre Company performs Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. For details, click here.
Kentucky Shakespeare Fest
Feb. 7-10, Murray, KY: Murray State University presents the 2012 Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, hosting American Shakespeare Center productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Winter's Tale. Click here for further details.
Sor Juana from the RSC
Feb. 2-Mar. 9, Stratford-upon-Avon: Royal Shakespeare Company presents The Heresy of Love, about beautiful, talented Sor Juana de la Cruz, a 17th-century Mexican nun whose writings were banned by the Church. For details, click here.
Molière at Berkeley Rep
Feb. 10-Mar. 25, Berkeley, CA: Berkeley and Yale Repertory Theatres co-produce an adaptation of Molière's A Doctor in Spite of Himself, a "gleeful whirlgig of song and shtick" (New York Times). For details, click here.
High-School Shakespeare
Feb. 17-18, Orange, CA: Chapman University presents the 37th annual Henry Kemp-Blair Shakespeare Festival. High schools converge on campus to present scenes and monologues from the plays. For a schedule, click here.
The Full Monty in Florida
Feb. 17-26, Tallahassee, FL: Florida State University presents The Full Monty, featuring six unemployed steel workers who decide to bare all. For details, click here.
Spain Comes to Tennessee
Feb. 17-26, Nashville, TN: Belmont University performs Federico García Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba, about a middle-aged Spanish mother who controls five grown daughters. For more details, click here.
Cripple of Inishmaan
Feb. 23-29, East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University stages Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan, about a Hollywood director, the Irish town of Inishmaan, and Billy, who wants more than anything to be in the director's movie. For more info, click here.
Chicago Shakespeare
Feb. 7-Apr. 7, Chicago, IL: Chicago Shakespeare Theater performs Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night’s Dream and an abridged version of his The Taming of the Shrew. Click here for more details.
WRITING CONTESTS New Ohio Review at Ohio U
Mar. 25 deadline; Athens, OH: Ohio University welcomes submissions to its New Ohio Review fiction and poetry contest. Manuscript limits: 5 poems or 25 pages of fiction. Prizes include publication plus $1500 for 1st place, $500 for 2nd. Click here for more info.
Norwegian Bestseller, an Edgar Award Nominee
Fittingly, the Mystery Writers of America chose to announce its Edgar Awards nominees on January 19th, Edgar Allan Poe's birthday. The award (winners to be revealed April 26) features 15 categories, Best Novel among them. Its nominees include The Ranger by Ace Atkins, Gone by Mo Hayder, The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino, Field Gray by Philip Kerr, and 1222 by Anne Holt. Holt, Norway's former Minister of Justice and a bestselling author in her homeland, has been published in twenty-five countries. Her 1222 (Simon and Schuster) is part of a series, the popular Hanne Wilhelmsen novels; it is the first of them to be translated into English. In the novel, a train derails during a snow blizzard and crashes into the mountains of Norway. Rescuers help the passengers into a nearby, practically empty hotel located 1222 meters above sea level. It soon becomes clear that the survivors are snowbound. With a nod to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (as Holt herself confirms), people start, one by one, to die at the hands of a mysterious murderer. Surly ex-police detective Hanne Wilhelmsen (previously shot in the line of duty and wheelchair bound) quietly watches and eventually unveils the killer. Here is a brief excerpt from the novel:
As it was only the train driver who died, you couldn’t call it a disaster. There were 269 people on board when the train, due to a meteorological phenomenon that I have not yet understood completely, came off the rails and missed the tunnel through Finsenut. A dead train driver comprises only 0.37 per cent of this number of people. Given the circumstances, in other words, we were incredibly lucky.
L to R: Anne Holt; her novel; Mystery Writers of America logo.
Mein Kampf Unavailable in Germany--The Controversy
Dateline: Wednesday, January 25, 2012, Munich, Germany.
German authorities win their most recent battle in an ongoing effort to prevent circulation within Germany of Hitler's political manifesto Mein Kampf (1925 and 1927). Revered by the Nazis, the work expresses Hitler's racist ideology and terrorist-infused plans for gaining and retaining power in a New Germany. The court ruling prevents British publisher Peter McGee from stocking German newsstands with 100,000 annotated copies of passages from the manifesto in his weekly Zeitungszeugen. This would have been the first time since World War II that any part of the work was reprinted in a magazine or newspaper within Germany.
As owner of the copyright, the Bavarian State Government may block reprints until its rights expire at the close of 2015, after which anyone can publish any portion of the text. McGee's publication was to have been part of a broader effort to print writings from the Nazi era, but the prospect worried authorities, given current sentiments in Germany. Its Parliament has just released (January 23) a study suggesting that 20 percent of the populace sympathizes with anti-Semitic statements. In light of such realities, 67 years after the war, Germany still struggles with how to relate to its Nazi past. McGee spoke of Mein Kampf's taking on unmerited meaning because it has been banned. Publication would diffuse its power, went the argument, would result in the text's being discarded. Many in Germany disagree. In their view, making the text available to the 20 percent would be dangerous. How much difference a few years will make is open to debate. In any case, official plans for publication after the copyright expires are in the offing. The Institute for Contemporary History in Munich is preparing a scholarly edition.
Flag of Germany under notice of copyright,
held by the state of Bavaria to Mein Kampf.
The Convert, an African Pygmalion
February appears to be a religious month, theatrically speaking. Onstage at McCarter Theater (Princeton University) is Danai Gurira's gripping new play The Convert, winner of both the 2011 Stavis Award and an Edgerton Foundation New American Plays Award. The action unfolds in 1890s Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), more exactly, in Salisbury (Harare). Chilford Ndlovu (played by LeRoy McClain), a westernized African, becomes involved in Christianizing and otherwise "civilizing" the locals. As in Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, Chilford takes it upon himself to convert his housekeeper's niece, the teenage Jekesai (Pascale Armand). Agreeing to rescue Jekesai from entering into a forced marriage, Chilford brings her into his spacious home and renames her Ester. His best friend, though engaged to another, soon casts a lecherous eye on "Ester." The plot progresses from 1895 into 1897, entailing not just lechery but also murder, politics, and more. In time, Ester herself champions Western culture, whereupon Cousin Tamba (Warner Joseph Miller) admonishes her to remember who she is. Intertwined with all this drama are the effects of recent conquest by the British South Africa Company, now in charge of mining, commerce, and the law. For her part, aunt-housekeeper Mai Tamba (Cheryl Lynn Bruce) spends much time mediating between the old ways and new. It is a testament to the gritty, often funny dialogue that despite a few exchanges in the Shona language, there is no loss of undestanding.
The second religion-related play this month comes from the Royal Shakespeare Company. The RSC debuts Helen Edmundson's The Heresy of Love, about the remarkable poet-nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. For more on this world premiere, see the listing to the left; for a brief glimpse of The Convert, click the arrow below.
