Through panel discussions with Festival artists and cultural critics, Festival Plus events allow artists to discuss the ideas, challenges, and goals of their work in an open setting, giving audiences a chance to ask questions and convey their experiences as viewers.
Witold Gombrowicz (1905–1969) remains Poland’s most successful theatrical export. Polish director Michal Zadara, a Swarthmore graduate, has created the most important recent production of the playwright’s satirical musical Operetta (getting its US premiere at the 2009 Live Arts Festival). Rita Gombrowicz (b. 1935) has overseen her husband’s literary estate since his death, including the years of the suppression and censorship of his work in Poland, and has authored two essential biographies of Gombrowicz. Moderator Allen Kuharski is the chairman of the theater department at Swarthmore College and an authority on Gombrowicz’s work.
Panelists Michal Zadara, director of Operetta; Rita Gombrowicz, widow, biographer, and literary executor of Witold Gombrowicz; Thomas Sellar, critic and editor of Theater (Yale School of Drama) Moderator Allen Kuharski, professor and chair, department of theater, Swarthmore College
Free / 90 minutes
Arts Bank at The University of the Arts
601 South Broad Street (at South Street)
Wheelchair accessible
Sept 6 at 1pm
This panel is made possible by a grant from the William J. Cooper Foundation, Swarthmore College.
The presentation of Operetta is made possible due to the initiative and support of the Polish Cultural Institute in New York.
The digital network is the new default cultural metaphor: we understand ourselves and bits of information less as discrete bodies but rather as links in a web of relationships. Nowhere is this trend more evident than in the mass of online participation on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter; the citizen journalism of independent media
organizations; and the self-published blogs about every topic imaginable. This panel brings together performing arts practitioners and critics to address this phenomenon through the frame of contemporary art.
Panelists Whit MacLaughlin, artistic director of New Paradise Laboratories; kanarinka, The Institute for Infinitely Small Things; Neil Kleinman, professor, multimedia, The University of the Arts Moderator Jo-anne Green, co-director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., cofounder of Networked Performance blog Panel Organizer Jeremy Beaudry, assistant professor, multimedia, College of Media and Communication, The University of the Arts
Free / 90 minutes
Arts Bank at The University of the Arts
601 South Broad Street (at South Sreet)
Wheelchair accessible
Sept 12 at 1pm
Technology is shifting from the periphery to the roots of contemporary performance. More than ever, performing artists and designers, engineers, and scientists are allied in pursuit of innovative visual experiences. But what does this really mean for the arts world? What brilliant ideas are on the horizon? And will they spell the end of live performance as we know it? This state-of-the-arts panel reflects on creative advances in lighting, sound, video, the internet, and more, and the cautionary considerations that accompany them.
Panelists Members of the creative team behind Chunky Move’s Mortal Engine; Dawn Stoppiello, executive director, artistic co-director, Troika Ranch; Moe Angelos, performer, The Builders Association Moderator Kathleen Forde, curator for Time-Based Arts at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC)
Free / 90 minutes
Arts Bank at The University of the Arts
601 South Broad Street (at South Street)
Wheelchair accessible
Sept 19 at 1pm
