“In the Words of Duras” Reading by Kathleen Chalfant and William Nadylam
Cultural Services of the Embassy of France
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The works of Marguerite Duras, France’s well-known author, playwright and film director, will be celebrated during a month-long multidisciplinary festival in New York City from February 18 to March 18. Known for her evocative and experimental free-flowing style, Marguerite Duras revolutionized the form of the twentieth century novel, and her innovations also carried to the screen and stage. At the initiative of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, and in partnership with Anthology Film Archives, the Baryshnikov Arts Center and the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), the festival will showcase Duras’s wide range of talents, from her award-winning literary works to her ground-breaking movies and plays. A unique photo exhibit at the French Cultural Services will also give the public a rare glimpse of her personal life.
New York-based American actress Kathleen Chalfant and Paris-based French actor William Nadylam will come together for an exclusive reading of excerpts from Marguerite Duras’s works. Kathleen Chalfant is a major figure among American actors. She won the Drama Desk, OBIE, and Outer Critics Awards for her performance in Margaret Edson's Wit and two more OBIE Awards (one for Sustained Excellence in Performance for End Game directed by David Esbjornson, and the other in 2003 for Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads). She was nominated in 1993 for the Tony and Drama Desk Awards for her part in Tony Kushner's Angels in America. She has worked with numerous directors, among whom Frederick Wiseman in Vasily Grossman's The last letter, Doug Hughes in Henry V, and Les Waters, in Marguerite Duras's Savannah Bay; she could be seen in Caryl Churchill's Far away and Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues and has appeared in movies, such as Tony Gilroy's Duplicity, and in television series (The Guardian). She received the Drama League and Sidney Kingsley Awards for her body of work. Kathleen Chalfant sits at the advisory board of the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Trained at the prestigious ENSATT School in Paris, French stage and movie actor William Nadylam has performed in numerous plays, notably under the direction of Olivier Py, Declan Donnellan (Le Cid), and Peter Brook (Hamlet). Recently he could be seen in the movie White Material by Claire Denis. Last year, he translated into French and co-directed David Hare's play Stuff Happens. He is currently in New York working on Bellona, Destroyer of Cities, an adaptation of Samuel Delany's novel Dhalgren under the direction of Jay Scheib.
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Schedule
February 17, 2010 from 18:30 to 19:30