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Palestinian-American playwright to bring play to campus Oct. 27
Andrea
Lynn, Humanities Editor
217-333-2177; andreal@illinois.edu
10/16/03
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. —
Palestinian-American playwright/actress Betty Shamieh is bringing her
critically acclaimed play “Chocolate in Heat: Growing Up Arab
in America” to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Following the free public performance at 7 p.m. Oct. 27 (Monday) at
the Krannert
Art Museum, 500 E. Peabody Drive, Champaign, Shamieh will take part
in a panel discussion of her play.
Julia Walker, professor of English,
will introduce the discussion; Oday Salim, a graduate student in English,
will serve as moderator.
Earlier this year “Chocolate” played at The Tank theater
in New York City and the Theater for the New City, also in New York.
Before that it enjoyed a sold-out run at the NYC Fringe Festival.
“Chocolate,” a two-person performance featuring Shamieh
and Piter Fattouche, is “a fresh, vibrant telling of five interlocking
stories on the most basic of human themes accentuated with music and
dance, and given life by two excellent performers,” wrote theater
reviewer Matthew Murray last month for www.talkinbroadway.com.
“Prejudice, sexual assault, duty, loss, revenge and obligation
are a few of the powerful emotions Shamieh touches on in direct …
surprising and poetic ways.”
Shamieh’s visit is sponsored by the Illinois
Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH), with support from
the Center on Democracy
in a Multiracial Society and several departments in the colleges
of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Communications, and the
department of kinesiology.
For more information, contact Chris Catanzarite at IRPH, catanzar@staff.uiuc.edu.
