Emruz Festival in collaboration with Rattlestick Playwrights Theater:
Please join us for an experimental performance by the Theater Director and Emruz Co-Curator Shadi Ghaheri in collaboration with Julian Elijah Martinez, Patric Madden and Jake Ryan Lozano.
People need Theatre?
Do they?
They need it the way they need each other. They need it to gather, to talk things over, to have stories in common, to share Friends and enemy.
I don’t think that’s true any more!
But what is theatre to us? What is definitely not theatre…
If we knew the answer, we would know wether to plead for its survival, [pause] or not.
Language: English Duration: 20-30 minutes Time: 4:00 PM EST | 9:00 PM GMT | 12:30 AM Tehran
Please join us via Zoom
Shadi Ghaheri is a director and choreographer from Tehran, Iran based in New York. She has directed Lucretia (HERE), Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Williams College), Shahr-e-Farang (Spectrum NYC) The Girl is Chained, Death of Yazdgerd, Titus Andronicus, and choreographed Passion (Yale School of Drama). Other Credits, The Slow Sound of Snow (Yale Cabaret). She co-curated a four-play season, directing The Trojan Women, and Lear (Yale Summer Cabaret). Shadi holds an MFA in directing from Yale School of Drama and a BA from Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University, where she was the first female president of the University Theatre Club. There, she directed Art and Stranger walking in my room. Shadi was a 2016 Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow and the 2017-2018 directing fellow at Rattlestick Playwright Theatre.
Emily Jo is a movement artist, dancer and choreographer, in Brooklyn, NYC. She earned a BFA in Modern Dance Performance from the University of Oklahoma in 2014, and after moving to NYC attended the José Límon Professional Studies Program, and has performed internationally and in collaboration with JKing Dance Company, Caitlin Cullen Dance Company, SEARCY, Idgy Dean, DMC, House of Yes, Cantata Profana (director, Shadi Ghaheri), and The Borscht Collective, of which she is a founding member. EJ co-produced the 2nd annual Perspective Exchange showcase in Denver, Colorado, in which she showcased her solo work, Your gaze hits the side of my face. She continues to explore, collaborate, and create work that aspires to find sovereignty in relationships, and strengthen our connections to one another through sensations and emotion. In concert with her movement practice, EJ studies the Tarot, meditation, and interpersonal energy work. (ig: @emily_jo52)
Roxanne Young, a native of Denver, CO, trained at her mother's studio, Expressions of Dance and Arts Academy and at the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance School. She attended the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas, TX where she was a member of the Repertory Dance Company I. In 2006, Ms. Young was a Finalist for the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts in Modern Dance, which was held in Miami, FL. After high school she continued her studies at the University of Utah, joining the Department of Modern Dance. In 2010 she joined the Dallas Black Dance Theatre II and in 2011 Ms. Young joined the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble as a member of the Second Company and was promoted to the First Company after one season. After being an apprentice for a season, Ms. Young had danced with Elisa Monte Dance, under the direction of Tiffany Rea-Fisher in 2016. In addition to dancing with Elisa Monte Dance, Ms. Young performed for AThomasProject, Bloodline Dance Theater and nathantrice/RITUALS Dance Theater in New York.
Jake Ryan Lozano is an actor/dancer based in Brooklyn, NY. Previous affiliates include: Signature Theatre Company, Olney Theatre Center, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Chautauqua Theatre Company, and Great River Shakespeare Festival. M.F.A. Yale School of Drama. B.F.A. University of Oklahoma. National Irene Ryan Acting Award recipient at the 2014 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. Film: Life After You. Television: Evil, When They See Us, New Amsterdam.
Julian Elijah Martinez Broadway: Network. Off-Broadway: Alligator (New Georges); and Mud (Boundless Theater Company). Selected Regional Credits: Father Comes Home From The Wars Part 1,2,3 (c/o production with Yale Rep and American Conservatory Theater); The Square Root of 3 Sisters (Dmitry Krymov Lab); 9 Circles (Forum Theatre); The Hampton Years (Theater J); Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, (Chesapeake Shakespeare Company). Television credits include Wu-Tang: An American Saga, Prodigal Son, Elementary, High School Lover, and Madam Secretary. Film Credits include: Dominant Species (short) and Swimming (upcoming). Martinez received his MFA from Yale University.
Patric Madden I'm a performer based in Brooklyn. I also direct, teach, write, devise, facilitate, read tarot cards ... I grew up in western Massachusetts running around in the woods with my brother Luke and pretending to be a wizard. I found my way to Brown University, where I acted in lots of shows and directed a few. Then I had a wild three years at the Yale School of Drama! I think that play can bend people out of the habit of their daily lives — disturb them, delight them, put them more deeply in touch with themselves and pique their curiosity about other selves. It's a turbulent time and a vital one to attend the relationship between art and justice. I don’t see the two as separable and am committed to conversations and practices that enable deep collaboration.