Plays by Mediterranean Women

Description

Plays by Mediterranean Women

Edited by Marion Baraitser

 

Plays from countries geographically linked but politically divided.

“…a great opportunity for those who don’t see much live theatre by women to know what they’ve been missing.” Everywoman Magazine

 

The Plays

Libration by Lluisa Cunillé (Spain): A mysterious, intense and comic two-hander about two women who meet in a city park at night.

The End Of The Dream Season by Miriam Kainy (Israel): A woman doctor outwits her friends and relations to retain her inheritance.

Harsh Angel by Maria Avraamidou (Cyprus): A gentle Chekhovian tale of a family torn by the partition of their native land.

Mephisto adapted from the novel by Klaus Mann/ Ariane Mnouchkine (France/Germany): The story of a German actor who sells his soul to Nazi ideology. Also a feature film.

 

About the Editor

Marion Baraitser is a commissioned Arts Council and BBC playwright. She is an award winning published playwright, short story writer, translator and editor. She took an M.A. in English Literature at Witwatersrand University, then worked as a teacher and journalist before settling in London. She was tutor in English Literature for Birkbeck Extramural Department, London University for many years and taught Creative Writing for Morley College, City Lit Institute, Women’s Theatre Workshop. In 1996 with an Arts Council award, and with grants from UNESCO and the European Jewish Publications Society, she started her own press, Loki Books, specialising in new fiction in translation from minority languages by women. As editor of Plays by Mediterranean Women she attended the Women Writers Talk Peace conference in March 1997 in Israel on a British Council travel award

 

About the authors

Lluisa Cunillé was born in Badalona (Barcelona) in 1961. She is a Spanish playwright, awarded in 2010 by the Ministry of Culture of Spain with the National Prize for Dramatic Literature. She studied in the drama seminars-workshops given by Sanchís Sinisterra in Barcelona. Her projects combine realism and absurd elements, with a certain poetic and humorous touch. Some of her important plays are Berna (1992), La festa(1993), Libración (1993), Accident (1994), and Privado (1996). She is also the author of some of the best works of cabaret in Catalan theatre.

Miriam Kainy was born in Vienna, Austria and immigrated to Israel with her parents in 1950 at the age of 8. She studied history and philosophy at Tel Aviv University and always combined her artistic activity with social and political engagement. Miriam Kainy writes for adults as well as for children and young people. One of her plays, The End of the Dream Season, has been translated and published internationally. She has also written manuscripts for radio and television and adapted and translated drama from English and Yiddish into Hebrew.

Maria Avraamidou

Ariane Mnouchkine (born 3 March 1939) is a French stage director. She founded the Parisian avant-garde stage ensemble Théâtre du Soleil in 1964. She has written and directed 1789 (1974) and Molière (1978), and in 1989, she directed La Nuit Miraculeuse. She holds a Chair of Artistic Creation at the Collège de France an Honorary Degree in Performing Arts from the University of Rome III, awarded in 2005 and an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Oxford University, awarded 18 June 2008. Photograph by Michèle Laurent.