OUTSTANDING WRITER AND PLAYWRIGHT TO APPEAR
AT TWO SARASOTA EVENTS
The Hermitage Artist Retreat is pleased to announce two artist programs taking place in Sarasota, one on January 28 and one on January 29. SELF-EXILE will be performed by Hermitage Fellow and Artist in Residence Nisha Coleman. This presentation is part of the SaraSolo Festival. It takes place on Sunday January 28, 2018 at 7:00 pm at the Crocker Memorial Church, 1260 12th Street, Sarasota, 34236. This is a $15. ticketed event. Tickets are available at www.sarasolo.org. SELF-EXILE won Best of the Fringe Award in Montreal, 2016. On Monday, January 29th at 4:00 pm, the Hermitage Artists Retreat
and Asolo Repertory Theatre will present An Afternoon with Donald Margulies. Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright Donald Margulies will read a scene from his new play, LONG LOST and if time permits, also read from a past work. The reading will be followed by Q & A. Presented in partnership with Asolo Rep, the event is free and will take place in the Cook Theatre at located in the FSU Center for the Performing Arts, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Reservations are required and may be obtained by calling the Asolo Box Office, 941-351-8000.
“Two amazing artists and two amazing events,” remarked Hermitage Executive Director Bruce E. Rodgers. “These are just two of the incredible artists who are working at the Hermitage throughout the year. Having the opportunity to share them and their artistry with the community is always an honor. Anyone interested in theater will want to make their reservations now for both of these events.”
Nisha Coleman is a writer, storyteller, actor, and musician based in Montreal. Her memoir BUSKER: Stories from the Streets of Paris recounts the years she spent playing violin on the streets of Paris. In 2015, in collaboration with the Banff Arts Centre, she created a multimedia interactive website based on her memoir: buskerparis.com. Nisha has performed for events such as The Moth, Risk!, Confabulation, Yarn, Raconteurs, Ladyfest, and her work has been featured on CBC, PBS, MAtv, and No More Radio. Her solo show, Self-Exile, transports the audience through key life events, from trauma to triumph, toddler to young adult, from a swamp in Northern Ontario to the streets of Paris. “Don’t be yourself,” Coleman’s troubled father tells her when she is five years old, triggering a conscious separation from the self. She becomes a shape-shifter: a teacher’s pet, a troublemaker, a clown, a recluse. Geographic isolation and social anxiety lead to a period of selective mutism in adolescence, but through the violin, Coleman reconnects with humans and ultimately to herself.
Donald Margulies won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends and was a Pulitzer finalist for Sight Unseen and Collected Stories. His many other plays, which include The Country House, Shipwrecked! An Entertainment, Brooklyn Boy, the Tony Award-nominated Time Stands Still and the Obie Award-winning The Model Apartment, have been produced on and off-Broadway and in theaters across the United States and around the world. His new play, Long Lost, will be produced in 2018. Mr. Margulies has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York Foundation for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He was the recipient of the 2000 Sidney Kingsley Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Theatre by a playwright. In 2005 he was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters with an Award in Literature and by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture with its Award in Literary Arts. He was the 2014 recipient of the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theatre Award for an American Playwright in Mid-Career and the 2015 William Inge Award for Distinguished Achievement in the American Theater. He has developed numerous screenplays, teleplays and pilots for HBO, Showtime, NBC, CBS, Warner Bros., TriStar, Universal, Paramount, and MGM. The film of his screenplay, The End of the Tour, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015, was nominated for the Film Independent Spirit Award and the UCLA Scripter Award for Best Screenplay. He is an adjunct professor of English and Theater Studies at Yale University.
“Nisha Coleman’s performance at the Hermitage last year wrapped poignancy in delightful,” said Program Director and Co-Founder Patricia Caswell. “You can’t help but love her. And to be in the presence of Donald Margulies’s brilliance is something any literary person will not want to miss.”
The Hermitage is a not-for-profit artist retreat located at 6660 Manasota Key Road in Englewood, FL. It invites accomplished painters, sculptors, writers, playwrights, poets, composers and other artists from all over the world for residencies on its beachfront historic campus. Many of these artists are Pulitzer Prize, Tony, Emmy, Grammy and MacArthur “Genius” Award winners. Artists are asked to interact with the community during their stay and as a result, Hermitage artists touch thousands of Gulf Coast community residents with unique and inspiring programs. Hermitage community programs are partially sponsored in part by the Florida Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Council of Arts and Culture and the State of Florida (Section 286.25, Florida Statutes), and the Sarasota County Tourist Development Tax Revenues. In addition, the Hermitage awards and administers the prestigious Greenfield Prize, an annual $30,000 commission for a new work of art, rotating among visual art, music and drama. The Hermitage also partners with the Aspen Music Festival and School to annually award the Hermitage Prize to a composition student during the Festival. For more Hermitage information, call 941-475-2098, ext. 5, or visit the website at www.HermitageArtistRetreat.org.
Now in its 59th season, Asolo Repertory Theatre is recognized as one of the premier professional theatres in America and one of the largest in the Southeastern United States. One of the few select theatres in the nation that performs in true rotating repertory, Asolo Rep’s highly skilled acting company and extensive craftsmanship bring to life this unique performance method that gives audiences the opportunity to see multiple productions in the span of a few days. Asolo Rep presents up to 10 productions each season including contemporary and classic works and provocative musical theatre experiences. A theatre district in and of itself, Asolo Rep is committed to expanding its reach into the community, furthering its collaboration with the best theatre artists working in the industry today and cultivating new artists through its affiliation with the FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training. Under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Michael Donald Edwards and Managing Director Linda DiGabriele, Asolo Rep’s ambitious theatrical offerings and ground-breaking education and community programming engage audiences and ensure its lasting legacy for future generations. www.asolorep.org
