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.

How to be a Doll Opens March 13th!

Mir Productions presents
How to be a Doll
Directed by Genevieve Gearheart
Text by Alissa Riccardelli

Featuring Carissa Cordes, Annie Harrison, Cindy Kawasaki, Ouida Maedel, Lucy McRae, Sharla Meese, Erinina Marie Ness and Aubrey Snowden

Original Music by Joseph Genden
Designed by Monica Faye Carter, Elizabeth Nielsen and E.I. Read
Produced by Julianne Just

Thursday, March 13 through Sunday, March 16 at 8:00 pm,
Wednesday, March 19 through Saturday, March 22nd at 8:00 pm
Sunday, March 23 at 2:00 pm

Access Theater – Gallery
380 Broadway, 4th floor (at White Street)
Tickets are $15.00, visit www.smarttix.com for reservations, or call 212-868-4444.


CRITICS ARE INVITED on or after March 13


Mir Productions' new piece, "How to be a Doll," is a mixture of dance, movement, and spoken word poetry created in collaboration with eight female performers from all walks of life. It is centered on the issues of young women, particularly issues of self. It speaks of women with muffled voices, of their rich inner lives and their silence on the outside. It is about the struggle between what one should be and what she wants to be and the failure to find the balance, reacting against her mother and the fear of reacting at all.

This piece addresses the questions: is a person what she projects, or what she is internally? If she is aware of herself and her perception, why is it so frightening to share it? Some search for definition through love, to allow others to sculpt them so they can put that fear into the hands of someone else. Others search through sex, looking for definition. This is a piece about fear: the fear of being alone, and above that, the fear of love - fearing good love and instead turning to bad love for safety's sake. Although the desire exists in everyone to step outside of one's surroundings, the fear of walking can be suffocating.