aBAiT / Argentinean Theatre: Buenos Aires in Translation May 23, 2006

6:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 24, 2006, Martin E. Segal Theatre.

An evening with Argentinean playwrights Lola Arias, Federico León, Rafael Spregelburd, and Daniel Veronese; US-based directors Brooke O?Hara, Pavol Liska, and Jay Scheib; translator Professor Jean Graham-Jones, Ph.D. Program in Theatre, CUNY; Performance Space 122's Artistic Director Vallejo Gantner; and BAiT's Creative Producer Shoshana Polanco.

This fall, BAiT will bring together four of the most dynamic playwrights from Buenos Aires, Argentina, with four American theatre companies on the cusp of the avant-garde to perform four newly translated plays in one of New York's leading cutting-edge theatres, Performance Space 122. This evening will present a reading of excerpts from the plays that will be fully produced in the fall. A discussion with the audience about the work of the translator will follow. BAiT is an initiative of Salón Volcán, co-sponsored by Performance Space 122, Instituto Cervantes, and the Consulate General of Argentina in New York.

Lola Arias is a performer, director, and playwright with a B.A. in Playwriting from the Escuela Municipal de Arte Dramático. Her play La escuálida familia has been published recently. She has directed her plays in Buenos Aires and France.

Federico León is a playwright, director, actor, and producer who has gained recognition worldwide and who has been selected by Robert Wilson as a protégé through the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. His award-winning dramas have been staged at international arts festivals in Europe, Canada, South America, and Australia. He recently published a collected edition of his works. Rafael Spregelburd is an award-winning playwright, director, actor, and translator, as well as the founder of the theatre company, El Patrón Vázquez, with which he has traveled to numerous international festivals. He has written 30 plays, many of which have been translated into German, English, French, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Portuguese, and Czech.

Daniel Veronese, an accomplished author and director, is a co-founder and coartistic director of the theatre company El Periférico de Objetos. His plays have been translated into Italian, German, French, and Portuguese. He has received numerous awards, and his work has been presented in many international theatre festivals, including BAM's Next Wave Festival in 2000.