The Austrian Cultural Forum and Deutsches Haus at NYU are pleased to present this panel discussion in conjunction with the North American premiere of Jackie, a play by Austrian Nobel laureate for Literature, Elfriede Jelinek, presented by the Women's Project Theater. Jackie is an intensely theatrical dissection of Jackie Kennedy Onassis and the myths surrounding her well-coiffed veneer. Like Jelinek’s acclaimed novel The Piano Teacher, the film of which won the 2001 Grand Prix at Cannes Film Festival, Jackie is a disturbing exploration of submission, power, and the hypocrisy of everyday life.

In a translation by Gitta Honegger, the play is now being staged at New York City Center Stage II, the new Off Broadway home of the Women's Project.

--

Martin Rauchbauer, the director of Deutsches Haus at NYU, will moderate this panel discussion on Jackie, which will feature the production’s director, Tea Alagic, and translator Gitta Honegger.


ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS

Gitta Honegger is a professor of theatre at the Arizona State University. For ten years she was resident dramaturg at the Yale Repertory Theatre, where she also directed, and a professor of dramaturgy and dramatic criticism at the Yale School of Drama. She was an early member of the Women’s Project.

In addition to Jackie, Honegger has translated Elfriede Jelinek’s recent performance texts Rechnitz and The Merchant’s Contracts, which will be published in the spring of 2013 by Seagull Press, Totenauberg (Death/Valley/Mountain), Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. Currently, she is finishing her translation of Jelinek’s opus magnum, the 666 page novel The Children of the Dead and a biography of Helene Weigel: Frau Brecht, for which she received a Guggenheim Fellowship.

She is the author of the biography Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian and the translator of plays by Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, Marieluise Fleisser Elias Canetti, among others.


Tea Alagic is an alumna of the WP Lab and previously directed Saviana Stanescu’s Aliens With Extraordinary Skills at Women’s Project. Recent work includes: Man Of La Mancha (Burning Coal Theatre Company, Raleigh), Lidless by Frances Ya –Chu Cowhig (Walkerspace, Page 73,NYC), Waking Up by Cori Thomas (EST, NYC); Anonymous by Naomi Iizuka (Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque); The Marriage Of Maria Braun by Rainer Werner Fassbinder (ZKM, Croatia); Binibon by Jack Womack and Elliot Sharp (The Kitchen, NYC); and Events with Life’s Leftovers by Alberto Villarreal Diaz (Dramafest, Mexico City). She directed the world premiere of The Brothers Size by Tarell McCraney at The Public Theater, NYC, and later productions at The Studio Theatre in Washington, DC, and The Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Ms. Alagic holds a BFA in acting from The Charles University in Prague and an MFA in directing from Yale School of Drama.

“Director Tea Alagic, who debuted Tarell Alvin McCraney's The Brothers Size, knows how to invest even ordinary speech with the force of ritual” – Village Voice.


Martin Rauchbauer joined Deutsches Haus in April 2011 as the Director of the institution. He studied German Studies and Philosophy at the University of Vienna and has an M.A. in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University in Bologna, Italy and Washington D.C. School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Concentration in European Studies and International Economics.

He worked as a journalist for Austrian Radio and Television (ORF) and the news magazine Format before joining the Austrian Foreign Ministry (now the Austrian Ministry for European and International Affairs) in 2000. From 2007 until January 2011 he was the Deputy Director of the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York City. Before that he was the Director of the Austrian Cultural Forum in Mexico City and a defense analyst in the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

External Link »