Bringing Yosef Bar-Yosef to the US, April 8-10th!

Hey all, been working on this project for awhile...I'll keep you updated with more details as they come in, but we hope you'll come out and enjoy this work!

Best,

Joyce Wu
Literary Manager



Mir Productions presents

a staged reading of
Difficult People
by Yosef Bar-Yosef
Translated from Hebrew by Barbara Harshav

April 8 at Hofstra University
April 9, 7:30 PM, at Columbia University
April 10 at Yale University
TBD at Princeton University

Mir Productions is pleased to present a staged reading of Difficult People by acclaimed Israeli playwright Yosef Bar-Yosef. This reading is part of the company's Unseen/Unheard Reading Series, which aims to expose audiences to the lesser-known works of established writers from around the globe. With the support of the Consulate General of Israel's Office of Cultural Affairs in the USA, the reading will tour prestigious universities on the East Coast.

Set in an English port city, Difficult People tells the story of a devoted but controlling Jewish brother who returns from a trip to Israel with a complete stranger for his spinster sister to marry. Without her consent, he has struck a deal and forces her to go along with the fibs he's concocted about her age and his own success. Dealing with the complexities of relationships as this bizarre "blind date" goes horribly wrong, the play exposes the fragility of truth and lies and what it means to be loyal to yourself and others.

The reading will be followed by a talkback with the playwright, who will be traveling from Israel expressly for the tour.

Yosef Bar-Yosef (playwright) was born in 1933 in Jerusalem, seventh generation in Israel, to an Orthodox family. He received a Jewish Orthodox education as a child and later went on to study Jewish philosophy, Kabalah and English Literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He worked as a seaman, builder, and eventually mainly as Journalist and Literary Editor. His first play, Tura, was staged at the Cameri Theatre in Tel-Aviv in 1963. Since then eleven plays of his have been produced by the major theatres in Israel, mainly by Habima, Tel Aviv's main stage. He won the President Shazar prize for drama for his play Difficult People. In 2003, he was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for his entire dramatic body of work.

Barbara Harshav (translator) has translated over 40 works of fiction and non-fiction from French, German, Hebrew and Yiddish into English. Issued by major academic and trade publishers, these works include Only Yesterday by Nobel Prize-winner S.Y. Agnon and, with Benjamin Harshav, Yehuda Amichai, A Life of Poetry. Harshav's most recent translation is of Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier, which has sold over two million copies worldwide. She is vice-president of the American Literary Translators' Association and was awarded a silver medal from the University of Rome Tor Vergata for her achievement in scholarship and translation. A historian by profession, she lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where she is a lecturer in comparative literature at Yale.