Sergi Belbel and Esteve Soler

The Martin E. Segal Theater Center and The Institut Ramon Llull present SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA at the 7th Annual 2010 PRELUDE Festival.

PRELUDE is a festival exploring the forefront of contemporary NYC theater and performance. Past years have featured over 20 short performances, readings, and open rehearsals with a focus on works-in-progress, as well as panels and informal networking opportunities. It also looks beyond New York City with its international SPOTLIGHT series. After focusing on Japan, Argentina, Poland and Korea this year’s SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA will showcase the work of contemporary Catalan theater artists - Àngels Aymar, Marta Buchaca, Sergi Belbel and Esteve Soler. Catalonia, home to Barcelona, is a distinct region of Spain with it’s own language and cultural history. With the generous support of The Institut Ramon Llull four new American translations have been commissioned which will be presented at the PRELUDE Festival. The SPOTLIGHT brings together playwrights in collaboration with New York City translators and directors in a cross cultural conversation around the production and development of new theatrical texts. The plays range in style and content from a dark comedy about the ﬁnancial crisis, an immigrant story of a cuban exile, a waiting room drama and a surrealistic social commentary in 7 scenes on the subject of progress.

Excerpts of the Plays will be presented and followed by a Panel Discussion on October 1, 2010 at 3 p.m. at Elebash Hall, CUNY 365 Fifth Avenue ~ New York, NY www.theSegalCenter.org ~ www.llull.cat

SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA will also present full readings of each of these new translations in a series to be hosted by different theatrical organizations across New York City.

Offside by Sergi Belbel on Sept 30 at 7pm at The Lark Development Center (939 8th Ave. btwn 55th & 56th) Girls Shouldn’t Play Soccer by Marta Buchaca on Oct 3 at 7pm at New Georges (The Room 520 Eighth Avenue, Suite 326) Solavaya by Àngels Aymar on Oct 4 at 6:30 pm at Repertorio Español (138 East 27th St) Against Progress by Esteve Soler on Oct 5 at 7 pm at La MaMa (1st Floor Theatre 74A East 4th St) SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA ~ Curated by Mallory Catlett

ALL SPOTLIGHT EVENTS ARE FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA About the Festival: The 2010 PRELUDE festival will be from Wednesday, September 29 to Friday, October 1, 2010 @ the Martin E. Segal Theatre at the Graduate Center at CUNY. PRELUDE 10 is curated by Morgan von Prelle Pecelli and Frank Hentschker, dramaturgy by Mashinka Firunts, and produced by Arwen Lowbridge. SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA curated by Mallory Catlett. www.nycprelude.org

About the Presenters: The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center’s primary focus is to bridge the gap between the academic and professional performing arts communities by providing an open environment for the development of educational, community-driven, and professional projects in the performing arts. As a result, MESTC is home to theatre scholars, students, playwrights, actors, dancers, directors, dramaturgs, and performing arts managers, as well as both the local and international theatre communities. The Center presents staged readings to further the development of new and classic plays, lecture series, televised seminars featuring professional and academic luminaries, and arts in education programs, and maintains its long-standing visiting-scholars-from-abroad program. In addition, the Center publishes a series of highly regarded academic journals, as well as single volumes of importance, including plays in translation, all written and edited by renowned scholars. www.theSegalCenter.org

The Institut Ramon Llull (www.llull.cat) is a public institution founded by the Government of Catalonia and the Government of the Balearic Islands. Its mission is to promote Catalan language and culture internationally, in all of its variations and methods of expression. The objective of the Performing and Visual Arts Department, that covers the areas of theater, dance, music and the visual arts, is to increase awareness of the Catalan artistic production abroad, by organizing international cultural shows, helping artists, performers and producers participate in the most important international events and festivals, providing travel grants and ﬁnancial support for speciﬁc projects, as well as information on Catalan artistic heritage and contemporary art scene.

About the Reading Hosts: A laboratory for new voices and new ideas, the LARK PLAY DEVELOPMENT CENTER brings together actors, directors, playwrights and audiences to allow writers to learn about their own work by seeing and hearing it, and by receiving feedback from a dedicated and supportive community. The company reaches into untapped local populations and across international boundaries to seek out and embrace unheard voices and diverse perspectives, celebrating differences in language and worldviews. The Lark also plays a leading role in advancing unknown writers and their works to audiences through carefully stewarded partnerships with a host of theaters, universities, community-based organizations, and NGOs, locally, nationally and globally. The Lark is led by Producing Director, John Clinton Eisner and Managing Director, Michael Robertson. www.larktheatre.org

New Georges is an award-winning nonproﬁt theater company which produces ambitiously theatrical new plays downtown; and is a play and artist development organization, providing an artistic home to some of the most adventurous theater artists (who are women) working today. www.newgeorges.org

Repertorio Español was founded in 1968 to introduce the best of Latin American, Spanish and Hispanic- American theatre in distinctive, quality productions. Throughout its history, Repertorio has introduced thousands of adult and student audiences to the best of Latin American, Spanish and Hispanic-American theatre, from classic Spanish drama, nearly the entire canon of Federico Garcia Lorca to works by new and/or emerging Hispanic American theatre artists. www.repertorio.org

La MaMa Experimental Theatre is a world-renowned cultural organization led by founder Ellen Stewart. For 48 years La MaMa has passionately pursued its original mission to develop, nurture, support, produce and present new and original performance work by artists of all nations and cultures. We believe that in order to flourish, art needs the company of colleagues, the spirit of collaboration, the comfort of continuation, a public forum in which to be evaluated and fiscal support. www.lamama.org SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA: The Plays and the Artists SOLAVAYA by Àngels Aymar In a small town in the pyrenees, an émigré couple lives in emotional isolation. The man is cuban. His wife is french. As the man's illness progresses, their daughter becomes his caretaker. Into this protected world enters a son who does not know where he belongs. The play is a bittersweet drama about memory, exile, and finding home by Àngels Aymar translated by US Latina playwright Caridad Svich.

Àngels Aymar - Actress (theatre, cinema and television), playwright and director. Resident playwright at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya 2006/07/08. In 1990 she created her own company L’unranlaltre. Author of more than twenty plays awarded, performed, translated and published in several languages. Her plays have been performed in Europe, Latin America and the United States. In 1992 the Generalitat de Catalunya granted her a scholarship for an internship with the company The Wilma Theater, Philadelphia, USA. In 2004 she presented her play La Rialla Inacabada at the FIL of Guadalajara (Mexico). In 2005 she received a grant for the writing of a play from the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes. She is the ﬁrst Catalan playwright invited to participate in the Pen World Voices Festival NYC (2008). In 2009, she premiered the work Trueta at the TNC and presented La Indiana at the Universidad de las Artes y las Letras de La Havana, Cuba.

Caridad Svich (Translator) is a US playwright-translator-songwriter-editor of Cuban-Argentine-Spanish-Croatian descent. Her play The House of the Spirits, based on the novel by Isabel Allende, receives regional premieres this fall at Denver Theatre Center and Mixed Blood. She's alumna of New Dramatists, founder of NoPassport theatre alliance and press, contributing editor of TheatreForum and associate editor of Routledge Uk's Contemporary Theatre Review. Her play In the Time of the Butterﬂies, based on the novel by Julia Alvarez, premieres in NYC in February 2011. Visit her at www.caridadsvich.com

Hillary Spector (Director) has worked as a choreographer, director and performer. Venues include: P.S. 122, Classic Stage Company, Public Theater, Alice Tully Hall, National Theatre of Cataluña, Princeton University, Spoleto Festival USA, L’ Opera D' Angers, L’ Opera de Nantes, L’ Opera de Nice, L.A. Opera, Seattle Opera, and Tivoli Theatre, Copenhagen. She is a member of AEA and AGMA. More information at hillaryspector.com OFFSIDE by Sergi Belbel A story of ﬁve characters in a time of economic crisis. Pol and Anna struggle to provide for a daughter, Lisa, who dreams of studying in the US, and a grandfather, Josep, who needs full-time care. Pol has taken a pay cut. Lisa's grant application is turned down due to government deﬁcits. Ricky, Josep's immigrant caretaker, struggles to send money home to his son who dreams of becoming a soccer star. Anna refuses to give up her few luxuries to save money. Since a major expense is maintaining Josep in his own apartment, the unthinkable becomes thinkable: killing grandfather. Belbel’s distinctive brand of dark humor is employed as the characters play out their fantasies in the desperation of making ends meet.

Sergi Belbel - Playwright, director, theatre translator and Director of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya since 2006. He has written around twenty plays, notable are: Elsa Schneider, Tàlem, Carícies, Després de la pluja, Morir, La sang, El temps de Planck, Forasters, Mòbil and A la Toscana. His work has been performed in: Portugal, France, Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland, Italy, Greece, Luxembourg, Canada, the United States (New York), Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile. He has translated, among others, plays by Molière, Goldoni, Koltès, Marivaux, De Filippo, Perec, Jon Fosse and Beckett and directed plays by classical and contemporary authors such as Shakespeare, Calderón, Molière, Goldoni, Koltès, Mamet, De Filippo, Marivaux, Némirovsky, Guimerà, Vilanova, Benet i Jornet, David Plana and Jordi Galceran. He has been awarded, among others, the following prizes: 1993-95 Premi Nacional de Literatura Dramàtica, Generalitat de Catalunya; Premio Nacional de Literatura Dramática, Ministerio de Cultura; 1999 Molière award for Best Comedy (Després de la pluja); 2000 Premi Nacional de Teatre, Generalitat de Catalunya; 2002 Max Performing Arts Award for International Promotion; and 2003 Premi Ciutat de Barcelona de les Arts Escèniques for the Dramatisation and Direction of Dissabte, diumenge i dilluns ( Saturday, Sunday, Monday) by De Filippo (TNC, 2002). He holds a degree in French Language and Literature from the UAB. Founding member of the Aula de Teatre at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Professor of Playwriting at the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona since 1988. www.tnc.cat SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA: The Plays and the Artists Marion Peter Holt’s translations of contemporary Spanish and Catalan plays have been performed in New York, London and regional and university theaters throughout the US. His translation of Belbel’s Blood recently had its Australian premiere at Theatre Works-Melbourne. Other recent translations include: Marta Buchaca’s Sorry and Guillem Clua’s critically-acclaimed Marburg. He is a professor emeritus of Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center and a member of the Dramatists Guild.

Mallory Catlett (Director) is a director/dramaturg whose recent works include: Beowulf (Banana Bag & Bodice), Red Fly/Blue Bottle (Latitude 14) and R ii & Vanya (Restless Productions NYC). Her work has been performed throughout NYC, site-speciﬁcally and toured to Canada,The Netherlands, France & Ireland. She is winner of the Elliot Hayes Award for Dramaturgy, a NYSCA Individual Artist Commission and a MAP FUND grantee. This is the 3rd reading she has directed of Belbel's work. For more info: www.mallorycatlett.net

GIRLS SHOULDN'T PLAY SOCCER by Marta Buchaca Anna, a 12 year old girl, Lídia, a 30 year old woman, and Josep, a 50 year old man, are in a car accident. Their families don't know who the other people in the car are. Where do they know each other from? Where were they headed? And most important: Why have none of them had ever mentioned the other two?

Marta Buchaca - playwirght and director. She is currently part of the T6 Project (2009-2011) at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, where she recently premiered A mi no em diguis amor (2010). In 2009 she premiered Plastilina (XXXV Premi de Teatre Ciutat d’Alcoi and Runner-up for the Premio Marqués de Bradomín 2007 at Sala Beckett, directed by Marta Angelat) and Les nenes no haurien de jugar a futbol, (Grec 2009 and Versus Teatre 2010, directed by Marta Buchaca). In 2007 she premiered L’Olor sota la pell (V Premi Joaquim Bartrina de Reus 2005, Sala Beckett, directed by Juan Carlos Martel) and En conserva (Institut del Teatre and Obrador de la Sala Beckett, directed by Marta Buchaca). In 2006, her play Emergència was the Runner-up of the III Premi Fundació Romea 2006 for theatrical texts. In television she has worked as a scriptwriter for El cor de la ciutat (TV3) and is currently a scriptwriter for the series Fills i germans (TV3). She holds a degree in Humanities from the UAB and trained in playwrighting at the Centre d’Études Théatrales de Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium) and the Obrador de la Sala Beckett.

Rowan Ricardo Phillips (Translator) is a graduate of Swarthmore College (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D.). His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The New Republic, and The Kenyon Review, among others; and his translations from the Catalan in venues such as The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Best European Fiction 2010 and the forthcoming Best European Fiction 2011. He is the author of When Blackness Rhymes With Blackness and teaches at SUNY Stony Brook.

May Adrales (Director) has directed at Goodman Theatre; Williamstown Theater Festival; The Public Theater; Second Stage Theatre; New York Theater Workshop; The Hangar Theatre; Long Wharf Theatre; Ensemble Studio Theater. Awards and Residencies: TCG New Generations Grant (Lark Play Development Center); SSDC Denham Fellowship; Van Lier Fellowship, NYTW Fellowship, SoHo Writers/Directors Lab, Women’s Project Director’s Lab; SDCF Observership, and Drama League Directing Fellowship. She worked as an Artistic Associate at The Public Theater for two years. Faculty, Public Shakespeare Lab. MFA directing, Yale School of Drama.

AGAINST PROGRESS by Esteve Soler 7 short plays that mix horror and comedy. 7 moments as bizarre as familiar. 7 surrealistic visions of a progress that is not progressing, a progress full of disdain, the same progress as ever. 1) A middle-aged couple tries to get rid of a Third World boy who has mysteriously showed up under their table. 2) A man hit by a streetcar cries out for help in the middle of the night. While he lies dying, a woman explains to him why she won’t call the ambulance. 3) Two businessmen consider the advantages of applying the most radical of religions to the productivity of their enterprises. 4) A family wakes up to ﬁnd a gigantic apple in their dining room and must decide what to do next. 5) A teacher reads a story for children to her students. But the story has a life of its own and proves pitiless. 6) Two lovers are about to end their relationship because their marriage depends on a temporary agreement that has just expired. 7) A seal kills a baby while reﬂecting on the sad situation of both species.

4 SPOTLIGHT: CATALONIA: The Plays and the Artists

Esteve Soler - Among his plays, the most notable are: Runes, published by the Institut del Teatre; Jo sóc un altre!, premiered at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya and published by Proa; Davant de l’home, dramatisation of Thomas Bernhard’s texts within the Teatre Lliure’s open rehearsal programme. His play Against Progress was selected from among 646 plays to participate in the Stückenmarkt 2008 (Berlin Theatertreffen) and was premiered in Santiago de Chile (Deusches shule), Barcelona (Sala Beckett), Munich (Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel), Nordhausen (Theater Nordhausen), Pont-a-Mousson (in the Mousson d’ Été festival), Paris (during the festival of belgian theatre), Athens (Synergío Theatre) and Biel-Solothurn (Theater Biel-Solothurn). The play will be premiered soon in Brussels, Aachen and Caracas. He has also translated two plays by Sarah Kane: 4.48 Psychosis (premiered at the Sala Beckett) and Cleansed (premiered at the Teatre Estudi of the Institut del Teatre). As a journalist, he reports on cinema for the newspaper Regió 7, and is a member of the writing team of the theatre journal Pausa. He holds a degree in Direction and Dramaturgy from the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona.

Hillary J. Gardner (Translator) is a Catalan translator whose work appeared most recently in “Poetàrium” (Institut Ramon Llull, 2009). She studied English and Spanish literature at UC Berkeley and in Barcelona and is a graduate of the UI Writers’ Workshop. Her theater credits include The Night Just Before the Forests for the Koltès NY 2003 Festival.

Dan Safer (Director) & Witness Relocation (www.witnessrelocation.org) make dance and theater shows that have performed across the US, in Southeast Asia and Europe. They recently did the English language premiere of Toshiki Okada's Five Days In March, and are working on Heaven On Earth, a new play by Chuck Mee to premiere at La MaMa in February 2012, and are, amongst other things, performing at Theater de Chaillot in Paris next Spring. Dan is also choreographing Ridge Theater’s Persephone at BAM and teaches at NYU.