Two days before linking up with performers in Russia, the Book Wings collaborative theater initiative will link performers from the University of Iowa with artists at the University of Baghdad at 9 a.m. CST (5 p.m. in Baghdad) Tuesday, March 11.
The initiative uses the latest digital and new media technologies to bring together actors, writers, directors, translators, and stage spaces—in this case, 6,500 miles apart—to produce one integrated, interactive theater experience.
Related event in Russia
Book Wings Russia will be held March 13; read more about it in this Iowa Now story.
Book Wings will stage six new plays commissioned for the project on the central theme of “courage” from distinguished playwrights in Iraq and the United States.
The bilingual performance, which is free and open to the public, will take place in Theatre B of the UI Theatre Building, and will be viewable worldwide via live Internet stream at www.writinguniversity.org/page/book-wings-live-streaming with watch parties at partner universities tuning in from around the world. Audience members in Iowa City, Baghdad, and online are invited to Tweet comments and questions for the live question and answer session following the performance using the hashtag #bookw.
Artistic and production teams in Baghdad and Iowa City have been working together for more than six months to prepare for the performance, despite the recent spike in violence in Iraq.
Book Wings Iraq will feature commissioned works by David Kranes, former artistic director of Robert Redford’s Sundance Playwrights Lab; Catherine Filloux, award-winning human rights and social justice playwright and co-founder of Theatre Without Borders; Mosul-based playwright, novelist, and journalist Hassab Allah Yahya, the author of many critical works on the current state of theater in Iraq; and Baghdad-based playwright and director Sarem Dakhel. The Baghdad production will also feature the youngest writer commissioned in the project’s three-year history, 21-year-old rising star Ammar Ali, who has won awards at the University of Baghdad Theatrical Festival—first for If the Donkey Spoke and most recently for Love in Recent Days.
Full bios and summaries of the commissioned works can be found here.
Book Wings arose out of a three-year partnership between the world-renowned Moscow Art Theatre and the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program as a way for actors, directors, writers, and creative thinkers of all stripes to meet and collaborate in the virtual world, fostering cross-cultural conversation and sparking new dramatic ideas.
The pioneering 2012 performance was so successful that a Book Wings partnership was formed with the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center for 2013 and with the University of Baghdad for 2014, with plans to collaborate with South Africa in 2015.