Everything You Wanted to Know about Polish Theater
(But Were Afraid to Ask)

Tom Sellar is editor of Theater magazine and associate professor of dramaturgy and dramatic criticism at Yale University. His criticism and reporting have appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, American Theatre and other national publications, and he is a frequent contributor to the Village Voice. Sellar received his doctorate from Yale in 2003 and is currently writing a book about theater in Eastern Europe since 1989.

For Theater, Yale’s journal of criticism, reportage, and plays, Sellar has researched, written for, and edited special editions about new Polish theater (including Grzegorz Jarzyna and TR Warszawa) and devoted to the playwright/novelist Witold Gombrowicz. He is currently preparing a volume on the ideas of influential Polish director Krystian Lupa, Since Sellar became editor in 2003, Theater has also published issues on contemporary performance in Russia, Hungary, Romania, and Serbia, with support from the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

http://www.theathermagazine.org

Richard Schechner is University Professor and Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He is editor of TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies, general editor of the Worlds of Performance and co-editor with Carol Martin of Enactments (Seagull). His books include Environmental Theater, Between Theater and Anthropology, The End of Humanism, Performance Theory, The Future of Ritual, and Performance Studies—An Introduction. He founded The Performance Group and East Coast Artists, with whom he directed many productions that have been seen around theworld. He has directed plays in India, South Africa, and China. Among his numerous fellowships and awards is a Lifetime Achievement Award from Performance Studies International, a Career Achievement Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and an Honorary Doctorate from the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. Schechner is an honorary professor at the Institute of Fine Arts, Havana, and at the Shanghai Theatre Academy where in 2005 the "Schechner Center for Performance Studies" was inaugurated. He is the Curator of the 2009 Year of Grotowski in New York.

David Sefton was appointed Director of UCLA Performing Arts in October 2000. Previously he was Head of Contemporary Culture at the Royal Festival Hall in London where he created and produced the annual Meltdown Festival, For UCLA Live he directs an ambitious annual series of music, dance and performance which has become renowned locally, nationally and internationally for its diversity and innovation.

www.uclalive.org

Joanna Klass is the founding director of Arden2, a non-profit organization based in Los Angeles, facilitating exchanges between Polish and American artists.  She has brought a broad spectrum of contemporary Polish theatre to the U.S., including Gardzeniece Theatre Lab, Song of the Goat, Teatr Provisorium, the Modjeska Theatre Company, Kana Theatre, the Wroclaw Puppet Theatre, TR Warszawa, andTeatr ZAR.  In 2008, she was invited by the Grotowski Institute to lead the 2009 UNESCO sponsored Grotowski Year.  A native of Legnica, Poland, she was educated in Wroclaw (MA in American Literature), and moved to Southern California in 1984.  Before founding Arden2, she was a facilitator and interpreter for the Polish immigrant community.       

Grzegorz Jarzyna, is one of Poland’s most renowned stage directors. His debut revolutionized Polish theatre. He holds degrees in philosophy from Jagiellonian University and stage directing from the State Drama School in Krakow. Since 1998 he has been Artistic Director of TR Warszawa (former Teatr Rozmaitości), one Poland's most innovative theatres.

Jarzyna has staged and radically reinterpreted classic drama (Tropical Craze according to Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Magnetism of the Heart based on Aleksander Fredro's Maiden Vows), adapted major European novels (Mann's Doctor Faustus, Prince Myshkin according to Dostoyevsky's The Idiot), directed famous contemporary plays (Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis in Warsaw and Düsseldorf), and well-loved operas (Mozart's Così fan tutte at Teatr Wielki in Poznań, Prokofiev’s Gambler at Opera de Lyon). His readiness and enthusiasm for cutting across genres have resulted in 2007: Macbeth according to Shakespeare (2005), an almost cinematicand Giovanni based on Mozart's Don Giovanni and Moliere's Don Juan, a production melding dramatictheatre and opera.

He has won numerous international prizes and distinctions. His latest productions are T.E.O.R.E.M.A.T. based on the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini (premiered in February 2009), to be presented as part of UCLA Live this fall.