NEW YORK CITY— Randy Gener — the Nathan Award-winning editor, writer, curator and artist based in New York — leads a series of public events (an artist talk, a symposium panel discussion and a book launch) taking place at prestigious New York institutions from Wednesday October 26 to Thursday November 3, 2011.
Artist Talk: On Wednesday, October 26 at 6pm at the BAM Rose Cinemas, Gener leads a public conversation with the internationally acclaimed Flemish director Ivo van Hove, whose stage adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s heartrending film “Cries and Whispers” premieres in the U.S., Oct 25—29, at BAM Harvey Theater as part of the 2011 Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. After seeing Van Hove’s “Cries and Whispers” at the Royal Dramatic Theater as part of Stockholm’s first-ever Ingmar Bergman International Theater Festival, Gener wrote “A Passion for Extremes,” the November 2009 cover story in American Theatre magazine which explored this director’s career and iconoclastic bad-boy status in the U.S.
Symposium Panel Discussion: On Saturday, October 29, Gener moderates and facilitates a public conversation, “Advancing the Creativity of the Artist,” featuring Faustin Linyekula (artist, Democractic Republic of Congo) and Ralph Lemon (artist, New York City). The conversation, which takes place at the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University, is part of a free, two-day symposium, “Dialogues Across Culture: A Model for Building Enduring Partnerships.”
Presented by MAPP International Productions and The Africa Contemporary Arts Consortium in partnership with the Museum for African Art, the Center for African Education at Teachers College and Columbia University, this symposium is designed to open up conversations around international cultural exchange, and to promote and build understanding and connections among artists, arts organizations, and public communities in the United States and the African continent.
Book Launch: On Thursday, November 3 at New Dramatists, Gener will host and moderate a book party and salon to help launch two newly released play collections under the NoPassport Press literary imprint. Playwright Carson Kreitzer (The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer) is celebrating the publication of her new play collection, “SELF DEFENSE and other plays,” now available from No Passport Press (more information at www.carsonkreitzer.com). Obie-award winning playwright/performer-director David Greenspan has published a collection of his work, “Four Plays and a Monologue.” The book party will also feature past and present titles of NoPassport Press.
These three upcoming events are the latest projects of Gener, whose purview embraces both the national scene and international culture. In October 2011, Gener served as the USA jury member of an international jury of prominent artists and leading critics for the 51st annual edition of MESS Sarajevo International Theater Festival in Bosnia and Hercegovina. In addition to working as Editor-in-Chief of PQ Today, the official newspaper of the 2011 Prague Quadrennial this past June, Gener has served for three years as the curatorial advisor of “From the Edge,” USITT-USA National Exhibition for the 2011 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. This USA pavilion, focusing on the most cutting-edge and socio-politically committed U.S. theater works between 2006 and 2010, takes the form of an arrestingly iconic structure (designed by William Bloodgood)—a beat-up old performing garage space in a grubby section of a city in Nowheresville, U.S.A., with a huge graffiti of President Barack Obama’s face prominently painted on one side.
For his editorial work and critical essays for American Theatre magazine, Gener has received the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism; the highest award for dramatic criticism in the USA and one of the most distinguished award in the American theater; the Deadline Club Award for Best Arts Reporting, awarded by the New York chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists “for shedding light of the government censorship and repression of artists”; five travel media awards for excellence in travel writing from the annual North American Travel Journalists Association Awards competitions; and NLGJA Journalist of the Year 2010. In December 2010, Gener was among six individual artists from around the world who were conferred with a Presidential Award as “Pamana ng Pilipino (Legacy of the Filipino Nation)” by His Excellency President Benigno S. Aquino III at the presidential palace in the Philippines.
Gener’s website is theaterofOneWorld.org.