NJPAC’s Alternate Routes Series, in collaboration with Epic Actors’ Workshop, hosts the FOURTH annual South Asian Theater Festival, an exploration of the artistry and diversity of South Asia through theater. The festival, to be held in NJPAC’s Victoria Theater on Saturday, December 12 and Sunday, December 13, 2009, includes performances by Epic Actors’ Workshop and Choir and Bengal Foundation of America. Complete festival information is available at www.satf2009.org.
On December 12 at 7:30 p.m., Nobel Prize-winning author Rabindranath Tagore’s 1924 masterpiece, Red Oleanders, a reaction to Western capitalism and industrialization, comes to NJPAC’s Victoria Theater in a production by the Bengal Foundation of America, with English adaptation by Nupur Gangopadhyay Lahiri. The story focuses on a beautiful woman who liberates a soulless mining town ruled by an oppressive king.
Prior to the production, there will be an opening ceremony directed by Sharmila Ghoshal of the Manjari School of Performing Arts in New Jersey and choreographed by Sanchita Chatterjee of Nriti Kala Kendra cultural organization in India and Barkha Kishnani of East Brunswick, New Jersey.
On December 13 at 3 p.m. in the Victoria Theater, New Jersey’s own Epic Actors’ Workshop brings Chehre (Faces) by S.M. Azhar Aalam, to NJPAC. Chehre tells the story of three generations of women who react differently to being victims of circumstance and will be performed in Hindi with English supertitles. Following the production, there will be a post-performance reception and discussion with Farley Richmond, Director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Georgia, Usha Ganguli, one of India’s leading theater directors, Sanjana Kapoor, director of Prithvi Theater in India, Bina Sharif of New York, Ali Anwar of New York and moderated by Sameera Iyengar, Creative Director of Prithvi Theatre, India.
Tickets for each production are $28 and are available by telephone at 1-888-GO-NJPAC (1-888-466-5722), at the NJPAC Box Office at One Center Street in downtown Newark, or by visiting the NJPAC website at www.njpac.org.
Alternate Routes is made possible, in part, by American Express, the Ford Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Originally formed in 1988 in New York, Epic Actors Workshop and Choir is a not-for profit company registered in New Jersey with a mission to showcase and underscore the importance of South Asian theater, performance and the arts within its community and in the larger context of mainstream American culture. The Company organized the first South Asian Theater Festival in 2006.
Bengal Foundation of America (BFA) is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization promoting cross cultural exchange of literature, music and the arts.
The Alternate Routes/World Festival’s humanities and residency program was cited as a national model of "Humanists at Work in American Public Life" by the White House Millennium Council in 1999. Baraka Sele was also named the 2004 recipient of the William Dawson Award for Programmatic Excellence by the Association of Performing Arts Presenters. The Dawson Award is bestowed to an individual or organization for the quality, innovation and vision of program design, audience building and community involvement efforts.
New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), located in the heart of an emerging downtown Newark, New Jersey, is the sixth largest performing arts center in the United States. Home of the Grammy® Award-winning New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, NJPAC has been widely cited as a catalyst in the revitalization of New Jersey’s largest city, attracting over 6 million visitors (including more than one million children) in its first twelve years of operation.
Programming has been made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts and by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. NJPAC is a wheelchair accessible facility and provides assistive services such as TTY ticket purchase, designated seating, Sennheiser infrared listening devices and seat cushions.