Middle East Plays and Playwrights
The New Millennium Project: Responses to 9/11

Dec. 20, 8 pm

Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd.,
Venice, CA. 90291, 3/4 of a mile west of Lincoln.

Short plays by Shahid Nadeem, Heather Raffo, Lory Tatoulian, Al Austin, Mark Ostrick, Barbara Genovese, Nzingha Clarke, Padraic Duffy and Joshua Zide.

Performed by Saleem, Rachael Ferguson, Susan Johnston, Bhavana Kundanmal, Soan Kundanmal, Younes Mourchid, Shida Pegahi, Felix Pire and Lory Tatoulian.

Directed by Felix Pire, produced by Jordan Elgrably, edited by Jordan Elgrably and Felix Pire.

Choreographed by Shida Pegahi.

Music by Houman Pourmehdi and Pirayeh Pourafar.

The show will be followed by a conversation with the playwrights, director, performers and the audience. Cosponsored by Beyond Baroque, the Mark Taper Forum and the Artists Network.

Tickets $5, free for members of Levantine Cultural Center. Cash Bar. 8 pm,

Limited seating, reservations recommended. RSVP 323.650.7010 www.levantinecenter.org

For press information, contact Amelia McPartlon, DDPR, 323.822.9265 [Los Angeles, December 16 2001]

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In the first Los Angeles theatrical response to the events of September 11th, Levantine Cultural Center, in an evening directed by Felix Pire, will present "THE NEW MILLENIUM PROJECT: Responses to September 11, 2001," a series of short plays and performances at Beyond Baroque, L.A.'s premiere literary arts center.

Felix Pire has assembled an anthology of work by such diverse playwrights as Shahid Nadeem, Heather Raffo, Al Austin, Joshua Zide, Barbara Genovese, Padraic Duffy, and Lory Tatoulian. The project is an outgrowth of local meetings organized by the New York-based Artists Network, sponsored by Mark Taper Forum, and cosponsored by Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center in Venice.

"We all felt compelled as artists to respond to 9/11 and to the ensuing war in Afghanistan," says Pire, who has appeared in such films as "12 Monkeys," "Dear God," and "Its My Party." Active on both New York and L.A. theatre scenes, Pire was nominated for an L.A. Ovation Best Actor Award for "Men On the Verge of a Hispanic Breakdown," a role for which he also won the New York Outer Critics Circle Award. This is one in an ongoing series of pre-opening programs, promoting awareness of Levantine Cultural Center, which opens in 2002 in Los Angeles and serves cultures of the Middle East and Mediterranean.

The evening of staged readings, edited by Pire and Elgrably, is choreographed by Shida Pegahi, with live music by Houman Pourmehdi and Pirayeh Pourafar, of the Persian Sufi group LiŠn Ensemble.

The show will take place Thursday, December 20th at 8:00 at Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA. 90291. Open bar. Tickets $5. Reservations are necessary, as space is limited and can be made at 323.650.7010.

LEVANTINE CULTURAL CENTER FACT SHEET

Until very recently, there has been no organized and unified Middle Eastern presence in the arts, certainly nothing compared with African-American, Latino or even Asian-American theatre companies and/or other professional affiliations, as Simi Horwitz noted in a recent issue of Backstage magazine.

Levantine Cultural Center, years in the making, is an outgrowth of cultural activism on the part of several Los Angeles figures, among them the founders of such organizations as Al Jadid, the magazine of Arab arts and cultures; Ivri-NASAWI, the Sephardi/Mizrahi arts society; and Open Tent Middle East Coalition. Devoted to the arts and humanities, Levantine Cultural Center proposes to become a new paradigm for Middle Eastern cultures and coexistence in the United Statesin stark contrast to the stereotyping of Arab/Muslim characters in Hollywood films, and as a bulwark against the lack of information about other Middle Eastern populations, among them Iranian, Armenian, Turkish and Israeli. The combined total of Middle Eastern American populations of Southern California easily exceeds 1.2 million and has yet to be served by a major cultural institution.

Opening in 2002, but with a current program schedule now running, Levantine Center celebrates the music, dance, poetry, literature, film, drama, video, painting, sculpture, new media, new ideas, and oral histories of this fascinatingly diverse part of the world. Stretching from the Andausian cultures of southern Spain to the musical traditions of Afghanistan, the Center's programs feature both contemporary innovative work and more traditional fare by artists and authors, performers and philosophers of Middle Eastern, West Asian and Mediterranean descent.