At 11 a.m. CST (8 p.m. Moscow time) on Thursday, March 13, the University of Iowa will link up with the Moscow Art Theatre to present the third and final performance of Book Wings, a groundbreaking collaborative theater initiative that uses the latest new media technologies to bring together actors, writers, directors, translators, and stage spaces 5,000 miles apart to produce one unified theater experience.

The works commissioned for Book Wings 2014 on the central theme of “Contact” touch on issues from gay marriage to climate change to torture in the War on Terror.

The bilingual performance, which is free and open to the public, will be held in Theatre B of the UI Theatre Building. It also will be viewable worldwide via live Internet stream at www.writinguniversity.org/page/book-wings-live-streaming.

Audience members in Iowa City, Moscow, and online are invited to Tweet comments and questions for the live talk-back following the performance using the hashtag #bookw.

Book Wings 2014 will feature works commissioned from PEN USA Literary Award in Drama winner Michelle Carter; Whiting Award winner Anthony Marra, whose novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, set in Chechnya, was longlisted for the National Book Award; and novelist Robin Romm, whose memoir The Mercy Papers was a San Francisco Chronicle best book of the year.

On the Russian side the contributors include playwright and prose writer Ksenia Dragunskaya;cardiologist, publisher, and writer Maksim Osipov, winner of the Yuri Kazakov Prize; and best-selling Chechen author Herman Sadulaev, twice short-listed for the Russian Booker.

Full bios and summaries of the commissioned works: iwp.uiowa.edu/programs/book-wings/2014Russia.

Moscow Art Theatre School Director Anatoly Smeliansky and UI International Writing Program Director Christopher Merrill came up with the idea for Book Wings during a working group meeting as part of the Bilateral Presidential Commission to reset relations between Russia and the U.S. in Moscow in December 2010.

“Over the last 20 years we’ve trained a thousand American students in the Stanislavsky Method, and now I can talk to my daughter every night in Cambridge, Mass., on Skype. Can’t we find some way to meet in the virtual world?” asked Smeliansky.

The three-year Book Wings initiative designed in response has commissioned short works from poets (2012), playwrights (2013), and fiction writers (2014) on the common theme of “contact,” and performed them on digitally connected stages in Iowa City and Moscow, fostering cross-cultural conversation and sparking new dramatic ideas. The pioneering 2012 performance was so successful that Book Wings was expanded to include China (in 2013) and Iraq (in 2014), with plans to establish collaboration in South Africa in 2015.

Book Wings 2014 will feature works commissioned from PEN USA Literary Award in Drama winner Michelle Carter; Whiting Award winner Anthony Marra, whose novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, set in Chechnya, was long-listed for the National Book Award; and novelist Robin Romm, whose memoir The Mercy Papers was a San Francisco Chronicle best book of the year. On the Russian side the contributors include playwright and prose writer Ksenia Dragunskaya; cardiologist, publisher, and writer Maksim Osipov, winner of the Yuri Kazakov Prize; and best-selling Chechen author Herman Sadulaev, twice short-listed for the Russian Booker.

Full bios and summaries of the commissioned works, see this IWP website.

Long term, Book Wings aims to provide a model for leveraging new media technologies to increase artistic collaboration internationally. Book Wings is actively seeking arts institutions, theaters, literary organizations, high schools, colleges, and universities to host watch parties of the live Internet stream.

Book Wings is made possible by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at U.S. Department of State, the Moscow Art Theatre School, and the UI’s International Writing Program, Department of Theatre Arts, the Virtual Writing University, Information Technology Services, and UI Video Services.

Since 1967, the International Writing Program has hosted more than 1,400 writers from more than 140 countries, connecting well-established writers from around the globe, introducing American writers to other cultures through reading tours, publishing books and journals, pursuing cultural diplomacy, and organizing tours, conferences, and other events around the world.