Caridad Svich
Born in Pennsylvania July 30, 1963
Cuban-Argentine-Spanish-Croatian parents
Posses a sense of dislocation extends to the fact that as a child and adolescent, she lived in several states: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida, North Carolina, Utah, New York, and California, not to mention many cross-country road trips in between.
MFA in Theatre-Playwriting from UCSD,
Trained for four consecutive years with Maria Irene Fornes in INTAR’s legendary HPRL Lab.
Received fellowships from Harvard/Radcliffe, NEA/TCG, PEW Charitable Trust, and California Arts Council.
2012 OBIE for Lifetime Achievement Playwright
2018 ATHE Ellen Stewart Career Achievement in Professional Theatre
2018 Tanner Foundation Award
Teaches creative writing and playwriting at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Primary Stages’ Einhorn School of Performing Arts
Iphigenia Crash Lands Falls On The Shell That Once Her Heart (A Rave fable)
inspired by Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis, this play with music and video spins Iphigenia into dangerous orbit through an un-named Latin American country as she journeys through a meta-hell where she finds her body embraced and destroyed by a rock star named Achilles, and discovers she cannot escape a destiny set forth by myths ancient and modern.
Three Discussion Questions:
1)Neil Gaiman wrote that myths are necessary because ”all our memories include the tales we were told as children, all the myths, all the fairy tales, all the stories. Without stories we are incomplete.”How do modernizing myths save/change us?
2)In the play Iphigeniia states: "Iwas born centuries aupon centuries ago. I have watched her grow up, Only to see her die over and over,
Story upon story….” Do we, by dismissing our own myths/legends/our oral histories, are condemned to repeat history over and over again?
3) Part 1: Caridad Svich writes in an essay “Euripides’ Children” that ”Root is what we’re after. A fire that not only burns, but hurts. As crime and violence is ever closer to us in this society, we are ever more distanced from an active and ethical relationship with the original event….How can Iphigenia meet everyone’s dreams and expectations?”(Svich;2011; 187-188) How does Iphigenia Fresa Girls find their orginal identity? How do you find an identity?
Part 2:Jack Halberstam writes in Where The Wld Things Are: Humans, Animals, and Children” :wilderness is a place of “equal parts freedom and constraint, companionship and alienation, expression and inhibition. Because the wild has been produced as the other to the home and the zoo, it can only be the place of ruin and sadness “(Halberstam; 2020; 145). Both Halberstam and Svich suggest that the wilderness becomes a place of both sanctuary and mythology in which LGBTQ youth exist and are sacrificed. How do the LGBT youth navigate a mythical wilderness?
Activity Project: Find a myth/legend/fairy or folk tale that you are personally connected to and create a new stor, theatre or performance piece, or artwork placing the tale in your world and time.
Annotated Plays:
Antigone Arkhe: Part of The Antigone Project: A play in five parts
Looks at the myth of Antigone through the eyes Historical Antigone( composite perception of how Antigone was portyed in the past) Digital Antigone( How we use the Antigone image in artistit ways in the modern day) The Archivist( A historian who tries to create Antigone based on historical documents) and the Narrator (Who makes social comments on today's world through Antigone). The play revolves around a guided tour of a virual museum and each character developes a portrait of Antigone artifacts attributed Antigone our are brought out. This is a multimedia piece.
12 Ophelias
Ophelia emerges from a river in rural Kentucky with no memory of her past. Characters from the Hamlet appear with different names but same characteristics. The characters names may change but the action of the play doesn’t. Then the chorus of 12 Ophelias appear. These are 12 different generations of Ophelias who help her recover her memories and navigate to a new identity and ultimately Olphelia is given a choice of following the choices of the past or chose a new future.
Full Length Plays
Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man’s Blues (a play with songs)
A Little Betrayal Among Friends
Any Place But Here
Archipelago
Aunt Julia & the Scriptwriter
The Book of Magdalene
The Booth Variations
Brazo Gitano [text with songs]
The Breath of Stars
Corazon Eterno (always in my heart)
DE TROYA
Fugitive Pieces (a play with songs)
FUEL
GERTIE AND ALICE BY THE SEA
Guapa
Hide Sky
The House of the Spirits/La Casa de los Espiritus
In the time of the Butterflies/En el tiempo de las mariposas
Instructions for Breathing
Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart (a rave fable)
JARMAN (all this maddening beauty)
Love in the Time of Cholera/El Amor en los Tiempos de Colera
The Labyrinth of Desire
Magnificent Waste
The Orphan Sea
RED BIKE
Sanctuary (American Psalm)
Thrush (a play with slaughter songs)
TOWN HALL
The Tropic of X
Trouble in Kind
Turn the Dark Up, Bow Down, This is a Hymn
Twelve Ophelias (a play with broken songs)
Prodigal Kiss [text with songs]
The Way of Water
Wreckage
Upon the Fragile Shore
Short Plays
Antigone Arkhe (part of the Antigone Project)
Gleaning/Rebusca
but there are fires
Finding Life
Torch
Scar
Self-Made (a border crossing)
A Short Time After
Nightwood
Transient Animations (formerly titled Begging the Eclipse)
Come Burning (after T.S. Eliot and Vivienne)
Torn Limb
A Clear, Blue Thing
Carnival [one-act]
COLLABORATIONS:
WARISWAR (an online text-performance collaboration in response to the Iraq War)
conceived and edited by Caridad Svich
text by Alexander Barreto, Chris Danowski, Lyssa Holland, Jennifer Maisel, Glen Skip-
Newell, Greg Romero, Caridad Svich, Ann Taylor, Timothy Verret and Michael Wright presented at
Theaters Against War,NY (August 2005) www.thawaction.org
Return to the Upright Position [online text collaboration in response to 9/11]
Athena Theater Group, Harvard University (2003) dir. Lisa DiFranza
Glasgow University Dept of Theatre (2002) dir. Stephen J. Bottoms
Brave New World, Town Hall, NY (2002) *excerpt presented.
Cherry Lane Alternative, NY (2002) dir. Allison Eve Zell
The Women’s Project, NY (2002) dir. Allison Eve Zell
Portland Stage Company, ME (2002) dir. Katerina Pinchin
Waging Peace Festival, Theater simple, Seattle, WA (2002) dir. Rachel Katz Carey
Perishable Theatre Textplosion Series, Providence, RI (2002) dir. Allison Eve Zell
Stations of Desire: Saints, Sinners & In-Between [online text collaboration]
New Georges Reading Series, NY (2000) dir. Elyse Singer, and Jessica Davis.
Perishable Theatre Textplosion Series, Providence, RI (2000) dir. Vanessa Gilbert
Theatre Double “Voices from Underground” Series, PA (2000) dir. Brad Rothbart
CollaborAction Theatre Reading Series, Chicago, IL (2000) dir. Amanda Delheimer
ReaLive Productions Reading Series, Denver, CO (2001, 2000)
Core Performance Manufactory Reading Series, Dallas, TX (2000)
Rm. 120 Productions Reading Series, Dallas, TX (2001, 2000)
Theatre in my Basement Reading Series, Minneapolis, MN (2000)
Bottom’s Dream and Sun & Moon Press Contemporary Drama Series in affiliation
with the RAT Conference (1999) dir. Mitchell Gossett, Jason Neulander, and Lee
Wochner.
24 Gun Control Plays : “The Wake”(2013)
The Maiden, The Sailor and the Student
Originally commissioned by INTAR Theatre, New York City in 1998
Adaptations/Translations
excerpt from THE LABYRINTH OF DESIRE by Caridad Svich adapted from Lope de Vega
featured in InTranslation (April 2008 issue) a web-only section of The Brooklyn Rail edited by Jen Zoble
http://intranslation.brooklynrail.org/articles/0408_Svich.html
Huddersfield
[original author: Ugljes Sajtinac
TCG National Theatre Conference Global Tapas special event, MN (2007) dir.Joel Sass
TUTA @ Victory Gardens Studio, Chcago, IL US premiere: 2006) dir. dado
The New Grop redaing series, NY (2006) dir. Dalia Ibelhauptaite
New Dramatists INTERPLAY, NY (2006) dir. Michael Sexton Caridad Svich’s US adaptation of Sajtinac’s
HUDDERSFIELD is featured in the web-only IN TRANSLATION feature of The Brooklyn Rail curated by Jen
Zoble http://intranslation.brooklynrail.org/articles/6_17_Sajtinac.html
This text received a reading in New York City in March 2005 under the direction of Michael Sexton.
Full-length. Four men (30), one man (60s), one woman (16). Running time: 2 hrs.
Serbia’s acclaimed young playwright tells a raucous tragic-comic tale of college buddies caught in a long
night of partying, sex, madness and growing up. A look at new Europe’s domestic front between unfinished
wars. This translation was developed as part of INTERPLAY, a playwright exchange project of New Dramatists funded in part by the rust
for Mutual Understanding.
Yerma; HotInk Festival, New York University (2006) dir. Kay Matschullat, score by Elizabeth Swados.
The Public New Dramatists, reading (2005) dir. Michael John Garces
The Shoemaker’s Prodigious Wife
Buster Keaton Takes a Walk; Originally commissioned by INTAR Theatre, New York City in 1998
As Editor:
Audience Revolution: Dispatches from the Field
The Breath of Theatre
Trans-Global Readings: Crossing Theatrical Boundaries
Conducting a Life: Reflections on the Theatre of Maria Irene Fornes
Out of the Fringe: Contemporary Latina/Latino Theatre and Performance
Theatre in Crisis?: Performance Manifestos for a New Century
Envisioning the Americas: Latina/o Theatre & Performance
Essays and Interviews:
Mitchell's & Trask's Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Fifty Playwrights and Their Craft
The Hour of All things and Other Plays
Innovation of Fire In Five Acts: Strategies for Theatre and Performance
PODCAST: Day From Night With Caridad Svich (April 2020-Current
Bibliography:
Blankenship, M (2004) “Iphigenia Crash Lands on the Neaon Shell That Was Her Heart( A Rave Fable); Variety 2/9/2004 Vol393/12 97.
Brown, K. (2016); “Oceanic Geographies: the Fluid dramaturgy of Caridad Svich”; Performance Research; March 3, 2016. 21(2) pg 118-124
Chirico, M.;(2012) “Hellenic Women Revisited: TheAesthetics of Mythic Revision in Plays Of Karen Hartman, Sarah Ruhl, and Caridad Svich; Dramatic Revisions of Myths Fairy Tales and Legends: Essays on recent Plays; Jefferson NC; McFarland & Company Publishing; pg 15-33
Deeney, John; (2013) “Out of Silence: Censorship in Theatre and Performance” Theatre Journal; Feb 2013; Vol 29/1; Pgs 99-100
Ford, Katherine; (2009) “Performing the In-Between; Caridad Svich’s ‘Iphigenia’(a Rave Fable)”; Gestos; 2009/48; 89-109
Gaiman, N.(2016)” Some Reflections on Myth (with several Digressions onto Gardening, Comics and Fairy Tales)”; The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction; New York; William Marrow; Pg54-66
Ghaavi, L.(20080; “of Both Worlds: Exploiting Rave Technologies in Caridad Svich’s Iphigena”: Theatre Topics; September 18, 2008; Pg 223-242
Svich, Caridad;(2009) “Antigone Arkhe”; The Antigone Project; a play in five parts; South Gate, CA; No PassPort Press; Pg61-80
(2012) Blasted Heavens: Five Contemporary Plays Inspired by The Greeks; Roskilde Denmark; Eyecorner Press
(2011) Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart; South Gate CA; NoPassportPress
(2019) Mitchell and Trask’s Hedwig And The Angry Itch; London and New York; Routledge/The Fourth Wall
(2008) 12 Ophelias(a play with broken songs); South Gate, CA; NoPassport Press
(2007) Prodigcal Kiss and Perdita Gracia; South Gate, CA; Lizard Run Press
DIGITAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Caridad Svich Website: https://caridadsvich.com
Utube Videos:
Orginal LA Production; Video was shown in the production https://youtu.be/EnCeC_5DYTk
Haley Courter as Achilles in Iphigenia; University of Iowa Production; 2017; https://youtu.be/GQhppodBLpc