Rehearsal for Truth, Spring Weekend: Puppenhuas.Treatment

Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival Presents:

Spring Weekend
A selection of European stage readings in NYC
Bohemian National Hall, May 9 – 12, 2019

Sunday, May 12 at 7pm

Puppenhaus.Treatment  by Magda Fertacz, translated by Artur Zapalowski directed by Zishan Ugurlu
Cast: Wednesday Sue Derrico, Chris Murphy, Tony Naumovksi and Anna Podolak
The play, directed by Jędrzej Piaskowski, had its premiere on April 6, 2017 at TR Warszawa.

Stage Reading, Poland

In Puppenhaus.Treatment, playwright Magda Fertacz, examines the issues of treason and collaborationism from the perspective of alternative codes of memory: “Traitors to the country,” “collaborators,” and “renegades,” are World War II figures that have re-entered the national and political discourse of today. By constructing a theatrical fantasy about wartime, the artists are asking questions about the stigmatization, punishment and judgment of individuals who, for a variety of reasons, renounce heroism and refuse to fight and make sacrifices for their country. How is historical memory and moral evaluation of past choices and actions constructed? What are the limits of interpreting and fantasizing about history charged with trauma and heroism? How can collective memory be healed?

Magda Fertacz was born in 1975. She is a playwright, screenwriter and interior designer. She made her debut as a playwright with the play, Dust, staged at the National Theater in Warsaw by Anna Trojanowska, which earned a distinction in the Radom Odważny contest in 2005. She is also the winner of the Gdynia Drama Award and the competition at the Polish Contemporary Art Exhibition. Magda Fertacz is a graduate of the College of Communication and Social Media and the Department of Journalism of the University of Warsaw.

Zishan (Zisan) Ugurlu has worked extensively both in New York and abroad as a theater artist since 1995. She is an actress and director-in-residence at La MaMa and Great Jones Repertory Company. She has performed in numerous productions with Great Jones Repertory Company, including Panoramadirected by Italian company Motus as part of The Under The Radar Festival 2018. Panorama presented in Italy, Belgium, and Spain. She is currently working on two directing projects: Music Room is about the prison system and will be performed by formerly incarcerated individuals and Fragments, Lists & Lacuna written by Alexandra Chasin, featuring Judith Butler and will be presented at New York Live Arts. She was recently awarded “Best Direction” for Yu Ling Wu’s solo performance Dream American by the United Solo Festival 2018. Her recent directing credits include Measure for Measure (in Turkish) by William Shakespeare, Agamemnon (in Greek) by Aeschylus, Not About Nightingales by Tennessee Williams, She Talks to Beethoven by Adrienne Kennedy, The Judith of Shimoda by Bertolt Brecht, π-ROJECT (in Greek) based on The Persians by Aeschylus, Purge by Sofi Oksanen, The Realm of Darkness by Leo Tolstoy, Baghdadi Bath (in Arabic) by Jawad Al Assadi, The Father by August Strindberg, Temptation by Vaclav Havel, Blood on the Cat’s Neck by Rainer W. Fassbinder, The Last Supper by Lars Norèn, Operetta by Witold Gombrowicz, Until the Next Whirl by Rumi. She is the founding artistic director of “Actors without Borders-ITONY” . She graduated from Columbia University with a MFA degree and holds a Ph.D. She is as an Associate Professor at Lang College The New School University. She is the recipient of the prestigious Fox Foundation Fellowship granted by Theater Communications Group.

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The Rehearsal for Truth theater festival, honoring Vaclav Havel presents Spring Weekend, a showcase of emerging Czech, Hungarian, Polish, and Slovak playwrights whose work reflects on current social and political issues. The plays have been translated into English and feature local New York performers and directors who will have the opportunity to try out these works onstage as part of the European Month of Culture. The program will include a full Romanian production as well.

The program is organized by the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation and the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, in collaboration with the Consulate General of the Czech Republic, Consulate General of Slovakia, the Polish Cultural Institute, the Romanian Cultural Institute, and Untitled Theater Company #61.

The program is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

For press release click here