Playwright Joyce Van Dyke, director Judy Braha, and actor Elaine Vaan Hogue talk about their collaboration on a new one-woman play featuring suffragist and abolitionist Julia Ward Howe, who asks, “What does it do to your soul if you don’t have representation?” The play is a fever dream and a call to action by Howe, who was a playwright, poet, and founder of the American Woman Suffrage Association which supported voting rights for Black women as well as white women. The conversation will draw parallels between Howe’s mission and today’s election.
Brandon Shimoda has been widely recognized for the imaginative spirit he projects in his poetry. His most recent book, The Desert, was published in 2018. He has been awarded the William Carlos Williams prize for his second book, Evening Oracle.
Ten original plays—written, directed and performed by Wheaton students—will be showcased in our biannual festival.
Longer form plays—written, directed and performed by Wheaton students—will be showcased at our annual festival.
Olga Livshin will discuss how culture, translation, history, current events and her own biography intermingle in her 2019 book of poems, A Life Replaced, which reflects on the experience of living as an immigrant under the Trump administration and with Putin’s war on Ukraine looming. Raised in Odessa and Moscow, Livshin writes witness poetry about xenophobia, war, and strongmen at the helm on both sides of the world. The book braids original poetry in English with translations from Anna Akhmatova, the great poet of 20th-century Russia, and Vladimir Gandelsman, fellow immigrant and winner of the Moscow Reckoning, Russia’s highest prize for poetry. Livshin’s poems, translations, and essays appear in The Kenyon Review and Poetry International, and are widely published. She holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literature, and taught at the university level for a number of years before focusing on writing and translation.
Please join us in the May Room for a reception immediately following the lecture.
Sponsored by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University and by the Russian Department at Wheaton College.
Emily Morse, Artistic Director of New Dramatists (NYC), engages in a conversation with Professors Charlotte Meehan and Stephanie Burlington Daniels about her work supporting contemporary playwrights and collaborating on ensemble-made theatre in her own practice as playwright, dramaturg, and performer. New Dramatists has been a major force in the development of US-based playwrights since 1949.
Tommy “Teebs” Pico describes himself as a poet (he guesses), a screenwriter (or whatever), a co-host of a dumb podcast for jerks, and begrudgingly as a performer. His books, IRL, Nature Poem, Junk and Feed have received numerous accolades including the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a Lambda Literary Award, an American Book Award and the prestigious Whiting Award.
Wheaton alumna Sandra Yannone’s poetry amplifies the split-second when the everyday turns into catastrophe; the moment of impact when knowing and unknowing collide; the fusion of before and after. And the aftermaths. All constellate here in Yannone’s first full-length collection, Boats for Women, to orient us toward that “choice/to turn toward a sacred face, a turn/toward your own longing to live.”
Longer form plays—written, directed, and performed by Wheaton students—will be showcased at our annual festival. (The original date for this event was March 2)
Seniors graduating with a degree in creative writing and literature showcase original works of poetry, fiction and dramatic writing.