Faculty News

The Department of Theatre is delighted to announce the first two Dasha Amsterdam Epstein Visiting Artists, who will be at Barnard College this fall semester, engaging with undergraduate students and with the wider public as well.

Sulayman Al Bassam will be engaging undergraduate and graduate students in a discussion of his work in Associate Professor Hana Worthen’s Politics of Performance class and will be giving a public lecture, “iMedea: Texts, Islands, Adaptations”  on November 21, 6pm, in the Ella Weed Room, Milbank Hall.

Kuwaiti playwright and theatre director Sulayman Al Bassam is a world-renowned playwright, whose work has been produced at the Royal Shakespeare Company, at Peter Brook’s Bouffe du Nord, and elsewhere across the globe; the author of The Al-Hamlet Summit, Richard III an Arab Tragedy, and many other plays, he brings a rigorous critical attention to the function of artistic work in the political sphere.

Jaclyn Backhaus will be meeting with the director, Adjunct Lecturer Cody Holliday Haefner, and cast of the Barnard College production of her play Men on Boats during rehearsal, and will discuss the production with the audience after the December 5 performance. A prominent American playwright, Backhaus’ Men on Boats was a New York Times Critic Pick; her play India Pale Ale won the 2018 Horton Foote Prize; and her plays have been produced at the Humana Festival, and elsewhere. Her most recent play, Wives debuted at Playwrights Horizons in 2019. Men on Boats runs at 8pm in Minor Latham Playhouse Dec 5, 6, 7, and at 3pm on December 7. Tickets are available at: https://theatre.barnard.edu.