Monthly Archives: October 2009

Valentino Achak Deng co-author of “What is the What” to speak on campus

Deng_EggersNovember 2, 2009

7:00 pm

Science Center 199

Valentino Achak Deng is the co-author (with David Eggers) of the 2006 National Book Critic’s Circle Award for Fiction Finalist book “What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng”. Mr. Deng is a Sudanese Lost Boy, who survived the Sudanese Civil War in southern Sudan in the 1980s, and eventually came to be settled in America, where, with David Eggers he wrote about his life-story in “What is the What.” Mr. Deng will discuss his life in Sudan and as a refugee, his collaboration with Dave Eggers on “What is the What”, and his foundation’s work building schools, health clinics, and community centers in southern Sudan.

See the listing in the College Calendar.

Sponsored by Peace and Conflict Studies Department, Sam Green, Swat STAND, English Department, President’s Office, FFS, History Department, Political Science Department

[The Daily Gazette reported on the event.]

Sponsored by Peace and Conflict Studies Department, Sam Green, Swat STAND, English Department, President??s Office, FFS, History Department, Political Science Department

Auditions for Production Ensemble Announced

Production Ensemble 2010

This year’s play for Production Ensemble will be Divided Together by Girish Karnad, directed by Assistant Professor Erin B. Mee, with sets and costumes designed by Assistant Professor Laila Swanson, lights designed by James Murphy, and original music composed by Dan Perelstein ’09.

Divided Together is a play with songs that centers on a young woman in love with her brainy husband’s sexy best friend. When their heads are switched, the central question of the play becomes: which man is her husband, the one with his head, or the one with his body? Divided Together is a surreal love story about the head/body divide (in its many manifestations), about the quest for perfection, and about the need to accept people for who they really are.

All levels and kinds of experience are welcome. Freshmen are especially encouraged to audition. The only prerequisite is Acting I or FYS Solo Performance. The play includes songs, dances, and puppets, which means there will be opportunities for singing and dancing, although there are also non-singing and non-dancing roles. There are also roles for people who enjoy improv comedy, and for people who enjoy spoken word.

Auditions: Thursday October 29, 4-10pm in Kohlberg 115

Call-Backs and further auditions: Friday October 30, 6-10 pm in Frear Ensemble Theatre

Sign up for an audition slot on the sign-up sheet outside the Theatre Department office (LPAC 13).

For the audition, please come dressed to do some movement work and a few group exercises, and be ready to read one or two scenes from the play.

Practical Information about the production:
Divided Together will be performed in the Frear theatre on March 26, 27 and 28

Production Ensemble is a one-credit course (THEA 22), and fulfills one of the requirements for the major and minor.

Girish Karnad is one of India’s most important modern playwrights. His plays are produced at major theatres and colleges all over India, as well as in theatres abroad. His plays, in addition to Hayavadana (Divided Together), which he wrote in 1971, include Yayati (named for a character from the Mahabharata; 1961), Tughlaq (about Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq; 1964), Naga-Mandala (Play with a Cobra; 1988), Tale-Danda (Death by Beheading; 1989), Agni Mattu Male (The Fire and the Rain; 1993), The Dreams of Tipu Sultan (1997), Bali, The Sacrifice (2000), Flowers (2004), and Broken Images (2005). Karnad has also translated a number of plays, including his own, into English and directed his translation of Badal Sircar’s Ebong Indrojit in 1970 at the Museum Theatre in Chennai with the Madras Players. His numerous awards include a Homi Bhabha fellowship, the Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya Award, the Padma Shri, the Padma Bushan, and the Bharatiya Jnanpith Award, India’s highest literary award.

Erin B. Mee has directed in some of this country’s leading theatres including New York Theatre Workshop (First Love), the Joseph Papp Public Theatre (The Imperialists), the Magic Theatre in San Francisco (First Love and Requiem for the Dead), and the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis (Troilus and Cressida). She has also directed in more experimental theatres such as HERE (Paul Schmidt’s ‘translation’ of Timon of Athens), The Ontological at St. Mark’s (Ottayan and Divided Together), SoHo Rep, and HOME for Contemporary Theatre and Art (plays by Charles Mee, Mac Wellman, and Donna DiNovelli). In addition, she has directed two productions in India with Sopanam, one of India’s leading theatre companies. Her book The Theatre of Roots: Redirecting the Modern Indian Stage was published in 2009 by Seagull Books and Palgrave-McMillan (part of the Enactments series edited by Richard Schechner). Her articles on Indian theatre have appeared in TDR, Theater Journal, Performing Arts Journal, Seagull Theatre Quarterly, and American Theatre Magazine; and in books on the playwrights Girish Karnad and Mahesh Dattani. She is the editor of DramaContemporary: India, a collection of modern Indian plays published in the United States by Johns Hopkins University Press and in India by Oxford University Press.

Food Not Bombs Co-founder Keith McHenry Talk

Food not Bombs logo

Food Not Bombs co-founder, Keith McHenry, will visit Swarthmore on Thursday, October 22 and talk about his 30 years of cooking for peace and working to end hunger, poverty and war. Food Not Bombs shares vegan and vegetarian meals with the hungry in over 1,000 cities around the world each week. McHenry collects, cooks, and shares vegan meals with Food Not Bombs groups in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Middle East.

October 22, 2009

Swarthmore College – Hicks Room: Hicks Mural Room 312

4:30 PM

Event Sponsors

Earthlust

Peace and Conflict Studies

Samia Abbass (class of 2011) is studying in Northern Ireland this semester

Peace and Conflict Studies minor Samia Abbass ’11 (on the left) arrived in Derry/Londonderry in September to participate in the college’s Northern Ireland Semester. Michael Duffy ’11 and Sarah Brajtbord ’11 are also studying along with Samia.

Sarah_Samia_Michael_in_Grainan-1_F2009

Samia is participating in the college’s Northern Ireland Semester in Derry / Londonderry this fall. Students in the program are enrolled at the University of Ulster and Samia is taking classes on international politics, and the government and politics of Northern Ireland. In addition to attending lectures and trips organized by the program’s field directors, she is also interning with Swarthmore professor Teya Sepinuck on the Theatre of Witness production that will premier in October at the Playhouse. Developed by Teya, Theatre of Witness is an innovative style of multimedia dramatic production that bridges theatre and social justice by giving the victims of conflict and trauma a voice, and allowing them to bear witness to their suffering. An avid photographer, Samia is also working on a research project with Prof. Lee Smithey and Prof. Gregory Maney (Hofstra University) to map and analyze changing themes and placement of murals in West Belfast.

Amarasinghe Lecture: Democracy and Political Culture: Some Aspects of the Experience of Sri Lanka

Democracy and Political Culture: Some Aspects of the Experience of Sri Lanka

A Talk by Yodage Ranjith Amarasinghe

Emeritus Professor of Political Science and former Dean of the Arts Faculty

University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka

Tuesday, October 20 4:30

Scheuer Room

Swarthmore College

Political culture, understood as patterns of orientations to political objects among members of a nation, influences shaping the political system of a given society. The third world democracy of Sri Lanka, once hailed as a model worthy of being emulated, stands seriously challenged today. There is no doubt that the two insurrections in the south and separatism in the north have significantly contributed to this current situation. In his talk Professor Amarasinghe will look at the impact of political culture in the whole process of building of democratic institutions and their practice, most particularly in the wake of the civil war. He will try to understand this by selecting a few major political themes such as power, power devolution, dissent and opposition, representation, among others, and examine how orientations to them impeded the shaping of democracy in the country.

Professor Amarasinghe, along with being Senior Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science and former Dean of the Arts Faculty at Peradeniya University, is author of monographs and articles on politics in contemporary Sri Lanka in Sinhala and English, including Peace by Agreement: Recent International Experience (in press); Political Culture and Democracy in Sri Lanka (2003); and Revolutionary Ideology and Parliamentary Politics: A Study of Trotskyism in Sri Lanka (200). He received his Ph.D in Political Science at the University of London in 1974, his B.Phil in Political Science at York, England in 1970, and has taught contemporary politics in the Intercollegiate Sri Lankan Education (ISLE) Program for the past 15 years.

For more information, please contact Steve Hopkins at shopkin1.

Organizing Skills Institute on campus in Spring 2010

Organizing Skills Institute

Even the best ideas fail when leaders do not have the skills to organize — to pull together a group, develop a healthy organization, cultivate new leaders, and understand how to plan strategically.? The Organizing Skills Institute — offered by the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility and Training for Change — will teach you organizing skills to help your group succeed. … read more on the Lang Center website.