Rub Elbows with Chicago’s Politicians This Election Day
And have on of the most exotic meals in town!
Alhambra Palace (1240 W. Randolph) is hosting the election victory party of the century and they are inviting you and your camera crew to join them. With a confirmed attendees list which boasts the likes of Alderman Ed Smith, Congressman Danny Davis, Senator Ricky Hendon andAlderman Walter Burnett this is the place to be on November 4th. Other confirmed attendees will include several religious community business leaders of Chicago.
But let’s not forget the most important thing here- the food! Alhambra Palace is known for its palate-pleasing menu with delectable dishes like three different twists on the Moroccan Tagine, out-of-this-world chicken, beef and kefta kabobs, and a mezza appetizer spread that will leave you with a grin the size of a palace on your face! The hummus, baba ghanoush and lebne are just a few of the traditional Middle Eastern fare that you’ll be dipping in to all night long. And, for those who like to have a cocktail or two to help fend of anxiety as we wait impatiently for our new leader to be declared, Master Mixologist Ricky Torres will shake up your night and your favorite libation.
For more information or to speak with someone at Alhambra Palace, please contact me directly.
Best,
Lina
ABOUT ALHAMBRA PALACE:
Alhambra Palace is a spectacular dining and entertainment complex, a grand salon of opulence and intrigue named after and inspired by the 13th century fortress in Granada, Spain. Alhambra Palace, located in Chicago’s West Loop serves Moroccan cuisine with a French twist while combining live entertainment and promises an unforgettable dining experience with award-winning Chef Kher Albourini. This Middle Eastern restaurant with a Moroccan flair also offers one-of-a-kind customized special event accommodations with a ballroom, two VIP rooms along with the main room downstairs. Alhambra Palace has most recently been featured on WFLD- TV and WMAQ-TV. To immerse yourself in another world or for more information please visit www.AlhambraPalaceRestaurant.com.
Lina Khalil
Senior Publicist
Empower Public Relations
Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Caesars Windsor, Canada welcomes Carole Samaha Dec. 13
Caesars Windsor welcomes Carole Samaha, December 13
Media Contact:
Holly Ward, Director of Communications and Community Affairs
Direct: 519.985.2869 or 1.800.991.7777 ext. 22869 ward@caesarswindsor.com
For immediate release: October 29, 2008
Windsor, Ont. – Caesars Windsor is proud to present Carole Samaha, celebrated star of the Middle East, performing her award-winning Arabic music on Saturday December 13 at 9 pm. Tickets go on sale at noon on Wednesday, November 5, for $25 and $35 Canadian. With the current U.S. exchange rate, your entertainment dollar goes further at Caesars Windsor.
Also appearing in the Colosseum line-up of world-renowned entertainers, acclaimed Grammy Award nominee Jewel, will be performing on January 23, 2009. Jewel has topped the alternative rock charts with hits such as “Foolish Games”, “You Were Meant for Me” and “Who Will Save Your Soul.” Her twelve-time platinum album, “Pieces of You” has been chronicled as one of the best selling debut albums of all time. Returning to her country roots, Jewel is celebrating her seventh career album entitled “Perfectly Clear.”
Jewel will perform at 9 pm on Friday, January 23. Tickets go on sale at noon on Wednesday, November 5, for $35 and $45 Canadian. With the current U.S. exchange rate, your entertainment dollar goes further at Caesars Windsor.
Tickets can be purchased through www.caesarswindsor.com or at the Box Office located in the main casino building on the second floor, open daily from noon to 8 pm. On concert days, the Box Office is open noon until midnight, call 1-800-991-8888. Guests must be 19 years of age or older to attend concerts.
Other headliners already on sale include: Regis Philbin (October 31/November 1), Hall & Oates (November 7/8), Paul Anka (November 13), Nashville Star Tour (November 14), Johnny Mathis (November 21/22), Blue Man Group (November 29/30) Spirit of Christmas (December 2-7), Dionne Warwick (January 9/10), Jeff Foxworthy (2 shows on January 24).
Caesars Windsor is the first and only Caesars property in Canada. The 5,000 seat Colosseum is the largest entertainment venue at any Harrah’s Entertainment resort.
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Media Contact:
Holly Ward, Director of Communications and Community Affairs
Direct: 519.985.2869 or 1.800.991.7777 ext. 22869 ward@caesarswindsor.com
For immediate release: October 29, 2008
Windsor, Ont. – Caesars Windsor is proud to present Carole Samaha, celebrated star of the Middle East, performing her award-winning Arabic music on Saturday December 13 at 9 pm. Tickets go on sale at noon on Wednesday, November 5, for $25 and $35 Canadian. With the current U.S. exchange rate, your entertainment dollar goes further at Caesars Windsor.
Also appearing in the Colosseum line-up of world-renowned entertainers, acclaimed Grammy Award nominee Jewel, will be performing on January 23, 2009. Jewel has topped the alternative rock charts with hits such as “Foolish Games”, “You Were Meant for Me” and “Who Will Save Your Soul.” Her twelve-time platinum album, “Pieces of You” has been chronicled as one of the best selling debut albums of all time. Returning to her country roots, Jewel is celebrating her seventh career album entitled “Perfectly Clear.”
Jewel will perform at 9 pm on Friday, January 23. Tickets go on sale at noon on Wednesday, November 5, for $35 and $45 Canadian. With the current U.S. exchange rate, your entertainment dollar goes further at Caesars Windsor.
Tickets can be purchased through www.caesarswindsor.com or at the Box Office located in the main casino building on the second floor, open daily from noon to 8 pm. On concert days, the Box Office is open noon until midnight, call 1-800-991-8888. Guests must be 19 years of age or older to attend concerts.
Other headliners already on sale include: Regis Philbin (October 31/November 1), Hall & Oates (November 7/8), Paul Anka (November 13), Nashville Star Tour (November 14), Johnny Mathis (November 21/22), Blue Man Group (November 29/30) Spirit of Christmas (December 2-7), Dionne Warwick (January 9/10), Jeff Foxworthy (2 shows on January 24).
Caesars Windsor is the first and only Caesars property in Canada. The 5,000 seat Colosseum is the largest entertainment venue at any Harrah’s Entertainment resort.
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Sunday, October 26, 2008
Toronto Palestine Film Festival opens
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Palestine Film Festival Opens to Packed Audience at Bloor Cinema;
Suheir Hammad, Bashar Da?as, Danny Glover at Opening Reception
Toronto, October 25 ? The inaugural Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) opened to a packed audience last night. Enthusiastic crowds came to see the Canadian premiere of Annemarie Jacir?s critically acclaimed Salt of this Sea, the first film written and directed by a Palestinian woman. Rafeef Ziadah, an organizing committee member, welcomed the 850 people in attendance by expressing that ?On the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, we are happy to bring the spirit of Palestine to theatres across Toronto for a whole week.?
Acclaimed poet Suheir Hammad, who plays the lead role of Soraya in Salt of this Sea, introduced the film, stating that ?I want people to see this movie as representing a part of the Palestinian experience; to see us as beautiful, complex individuals. I want people to see themselves in our stories. This is for the girls who?ve felt marginalized, and the indigenous people of Canada who continue to live as second class citizens in their own homeland.? The successful screening was followed by an engaging Q&A with Suheir Hammad and members of the audience.
Special guests celebrated the successful opening at a gala reception held after the film. Guests were treated to a pre-screening of Min Sook Lee?s Sedition. In attendance, were Suheir Hammad, Danny Glover, Bashar Da?as, along with a number of other prominent Torontonians active in the local media and arts scene. Farid Ayad, president of Paelstine House, warmly welcomed the guests.
Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) was conceived by ?. The festival continues throughout the week, with over 30 screenings, including 25 Canadian premieres. The festival concludes on November 1 with the Canadian premiere of Slingshot Hip Hop. The director of the film Jackie Reem Salloum, will be in attendance for the closing portion of the festival. She will also present on a panel on ?Palestinian Cinema and Cultural Resistance? at the William Doo Auditorium at the University of Toronto. Tickets can still be purchased online @ www.tpff.ca, at the Women?s Bookstore (73 Harbord Street), and Palestine House (3195 Erindale Station Road).
Media Liaison
Toronto Palestine Film Festival
October 25 - November 1, 2008
phone: 647-882-9231
e-mail: media@tpff.ca
http://www.tpff.ca/media.htm
Palestine Film Festival Opens to Packed Audience at Bloor Cinema;
Suheir Hammad, Bashar Da?as, Danny Glover at Opening Reception
Toronto, October 25 ? The inaugural Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) opened to a packed audience last night. Enthusiastic crowds came to see the Canadian premiere of Annemarie Jacir?s critically acclaimed Salt of this Sea, the first film written and directed by a Palestinian woman. Rafeef Ziadah, an organizing committee member, welcomed the 850 people in attendance by expressing that ?On the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, we are happy to bring the spirit of Palestine to theatres across Toronto for a whole week.?
Acclaimed poet Suheir Hammad, who plays the lead role of Soraya in Salt of this Sea, introduced the film, stating that ?I want people to see this movie as representing a part of the Palestinian experience; to see us as beautiful, complex individuals. I want people to see themselves in our stories. This is for the girls who?ve felt marginalized, and the indigenous people of Canada who continue to live as second class citizens in their own homeland.? The successful screening was followed by an engaging Q&A with Suheir Hammad and members of the audience.
Special guests celebrated the successful opening at a gala reception held after the film. Guests were treated to a pre-screening of Min Sook Lee?s Sedition. In attendance, were Suheir Hammad, Danny Glover, Bashar Da?as, along with a number of other prominent Torontonians active in the local media and arts scene. Farid Ayad, president of Paelstine House, warmly welcomed the guests.
Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) was conceived by ?. The festival continues throughout the week, with over 30 screenings, including 25 Canadian premieres. The festival concludes on November 1 with the Canadian premiere of Slingshot Hip Hop. The director of the film Jackie Reem Salloum, will be in attendance for the closing portion of the festival. She will also present on a panel on ?Palestinian Cinema and Cultural Resistance? at the William Doo Auditorium at the University of Toronto. Tickets can still be purchased online @ www.tpff.ca, at the Women?s Bookstore (73 Harbord Street), and Palestine House (3195 Erindale Station Road).
Media Liaison
Toronto Palestine Film Festival
October 25 - November 1, 2008
phone: 647-882-9231
e-mail: media@tpff.ca
http://www.tpff.ca/media.htm
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Judge’s actions overshadow already troubled Iraq war contracts case
Judge’s actions overshadow already troubled Iraq war contracts case
By Ray Hanania
Jurors in the controversial Halliburton corruption case playing out in a Federal Courtroom in Peoria complained to U.S. District Court Judge Joe Billy McDade last week they were “deadlocked” following their first full day of deliberations in the three-week long trial.
The drama began when the jury foreman sent McDade a note Thursday afternoon identifying one juror as refusing to support a unanimous verdict. Instead of simply responding by telling jurors to continue their deliberations, McDade summoned the foreman who sent the note to explain why it was sent.
Declaring his fears the hold-out juror might be "biased," "predisposed" and questioned if she was “fair,” the soft-spoken McDade then summoned all the jurors into to his courtroom to express “regrets” about the apparent deadlock.
“The court is unsure if this is a disagreement among jurors, or a breakdown in the jury process,” McDade told the jury of 3 men and 9 women as he reread his instructions that he had read twice before. “Each of you looked me in the eye and said you would be impartial. … The lone juror may feel she is being pressured but I assure you, that is not the case.”
Clearly concerned about defense protests that his actions might prejudice the jury, McDade was compelled to repeat, “This is not an attempt to pressure anyone to change their vote.”
Well, then, why tell them anything? Why not simply accept their decision or just ask them to try harder without any comment? Why force the jury to make a decision?
McDade and prosecutors are in a bind. This is the second time the case has come before McDade’s court. The first trial, held in Rock Island, deadlocked with the same prosecutors and same evidence.
At the heart of the case is Jeff Mazon, a southwest suburban Chicago man who is accused of inflating the cost of a war related contract while working for Halliburton/KBR in Kuwait in exchange for a bribe he allegedly received six months after he quit the company’s employ.
Prosecutors cited finger-pointing from his Halliburton supervisors and said Mazon manipulated an embedded dollar-to-Kuwait Dinar formula in an Excel Spreadsheet. The defense argued the spreadsheet error was a simple mistake. One Kuwait Dinar is equal to 3.3 U.S. Dollars but the mistake increased the dollar amount from $685,000 to $5.52 million.
Witnesses agreed Mazon was overworked and tired, like all of the employees at the company who worked up to 20 hour days, seven days a week as the country rushed into the Iraq War in March 2003.
The alleged “bribe” was a business deal, Mazon insisted, one he negotiated six months after he left Halliburton and took a new job in Greece for the Athens Olympics. Mazon did not try to conceal the payment and he openly declared it to U.S. Customs when returning from Greece to the states.
McDade could have simply ignored the jury foreman’s note and instructed the jurors to go back and continue deliberating. But by expressing concern about possible “juror bias,” McDade was reflecting a tenor in the case that has been decidedly anti-defense.
At the start of this second trial, McDade squared off with Mazon’s attorney J. Scott Arthur in a heated clash. McDade warned he would not give Scott “leeway” to explore an assortment of issues Scott felt Mazon needed to make his defense but that the judge said were outside the realm of the case.
The judge prohibited Mazon from arguing as a part of his defense:
· That he is being made a “scapegoat” by his supervisors at Halliburton who approved the contract and that other major contract errors have occurred. Mazon argues that the inflated contract was a mistake caused by a flawed embedded formula in an Excel Spreadsheet and not a part of a “scheme.”
· That Halliburton and his supervisors “framed” him in order to pass the responsibility from them to him. While Mazon acknowledges the contract price was a mistake, he says that the mistake was reviewed by everyone of his supervisors who were more concerned with processing government contracts as fast as possible, rather than with the accuracy of the contracts themselves.
· That the government participated in the conspiracy to heap the blame on Mazon, a small cog in a nearly one trillion dollar contract system that has pumped tens of billions of dollars of profit into Halliburton’s coffers. Halliburton’s former CEO is Vice President Dick Cheney.
· That Halliburton has a history of improper conduct. Halliburton is plagued by scandals, all unrelated to Mazon, yet the prosecutors were able to bring in two convicted felons who worked for Halliburton and who admitted taking bribes to sully Mazon through guilt by association. Mazon was not permitted to argue that Halliburton has much to lose in a trial that addresses the bigger issues.
Defense attorneys expressed concern Mazon cannot receive a fair trial under those restrictions. “The very act of calling the jurors back in to listen to the judge tell them he is concerned and then to re-read his instructions clearly pressures the one juror who supports acquittal,” Mazon’s attorneys said.
In their flash at the start of the trial, McDade offered a chilling warning to Arthur, cautioning, “Whether or not there will be a 3rd trial in this case by you is questionable.”
Under McDade’s orders, the jury deliberated about 8 hours Friday before retiring for the weekend and telling the judge they were exhausted. Jurors resume deliberations Monday.
The jury may in fact reach a unanimous agreement on a verdict and the hold-out juror may succumb to the pressure and change her mind. But the question that seems lost is “can this jury now be fair?”
(Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. He can be reached at www.ArabWritersGroup.com and by email at rayhanania@comcast.net.)
By Ray Hanania
Jurors in the controversial Halliburton corruption case playing out in a Federal Courtroom in Peoria complained to U.S. District Court Judge Joe Billy McDade last week they were “deadlocked” following their first full day of deliberations in the three-week long trial.
The drama began when the jury foreman sent McDade a note Thursday afternoon identifying one juror as refusing to support a unanimous verdict. Instead of simply responding by telling jurors to continue their deliberations, McDade summoned the foreman who sent the note to explain why it was sent.
Declaring his fears the hold-out juror might be "biased," "predisposed" and questioned if she was “fair,” the soft-spoken McDade then summoned all the jurors into to his courtroom to express “regrets” about the apparent deadlock.
“The court is unsure if this is a disagreement among jurors, or a breakdown in the jury process,” McDade told the jury of 3 men and 9 women as he reread his instructions that he had read twice before. “Each of you looked me in the eye and said you would be impartial. … The lone juror may feel she is being pressured but I assure you, that is not the case.”
Clearly concerned about defense protests that his actions might prejudice the jury, McDade was compelled to repeat, “This is not an attempt to pressure anyone to change their vote.”
Well, then, why tell them anything? Why not simply accept their decision or just ask them to try harder without any comment? Why force the jury to make a decision?
McDade and prosecutors are in a bind. This is the second time the case has come before McDade’s court. The first trial, held in Rock Island, deadlocked with the same prosecutors and same evidence.
At the heart of the case is Jeff Mazon, a southwest suburban Chicago man who is accused of inflating the cost of a war related contract while working for Halliburton/KBR in Kuwait in exchange for a bribe he allegedly received six months after he quit the company’s employ.
Prosecutors cited finger-pointing from his Halliburton supervisors and said Mazon manipulated an embedded dollar-to-Kuwait Dinar formula in an Excel Spreadsheet. The defense argued the spreadsheet error was a simple mistake. One Kuwait Dinar is equal to 3.3 U.S. Dollars but the mistake increased the dollar amount from $685,000 to $5.52 million.
Witnesses agreed Mazon was overworked and tired, like all of the employees at the company who worked up to 20 hour days, seven days a week as the country rushed into the Iraq War in March 2003.
The alleged “bribe” was a business deal, Mazon insisted, one he negotiated six months after he left Halliburton and took a new job in Greece for the Athens Olympics. Mazon did not try to conceal the payment and he openly declared it to U.S. Customs when returning from Greece to the states.
McDade could have simply ignored the jury foreman’s note and instructed the jurors to go back and continue deliberating. But by expressing concern about possible “juror bias,” McDade was reflecting a tenor in the case that has been decidedly anti-defense.
At the start of this second trial, McDade squared off with Mazon’s attorney J. Scott Arthur in a heated clash. McDade warned he would not give Scott “leeway” to explore an assortment of issues Scott felt Mazon needed to make his defense but that the judge said were outside the realm of the case.
The judge prohibited Mazon from arguing as a part of his defense:
· That he is being made a “scapegoat” by his supervisors at Halliburton who approved the contract and that other major contract errors have occurred. Mazon argues that the inflated contract was a mistake caused by a flawed embedded formula in an Excel Spreadsheet and not a part of a “scheme.”
· That Halliburton and his supervisors “framed” him in order to pass the responsibility from them to him. While Mazon acknowledges the contract price was a mistake, he says that the mistake was reviewed by everyone of his supervisors who were more concerned with processing government contracts as fast as possible, rather than with the accuracy of the contracts themselves.
· That the government participated in the conspiracy to heap the blame on Mazon, a small cog in a nearly one trillion dollar contract system that has pumped tens of billions of dollars of profit into Halliburton’s coffers. Halliburton’s former CEO is Vice President Dick Cheney.
· That Halliburton has a history of improper conduct. Halliburton is plagued by scandals, all unrelated to Mazon, yet the prosecutors were able to bring in two convicted felons who worked for Halliburton and who admitted taking bribes to sully Mazon through guilt by association. Mazon was not permitted to argue that Halliburton has much to lose in a trial that addresses the bigger issues.
Defense attorneys expressed concern Mazon cannot receive a fair trial under those restrictions. “The very act of calling the jurors back in to listen to the judge tell them he is concerned and then to re-read his instructions clearly pressures the one juror who supports acquittal,” Mazon’s attorneys said.
In their flash at the start of the trial, McDade offered a chilling warning to Arthur, cautioning, “Whether or not there will be a 3rd trial in this case by you is questionable.”
Under McDade’s orders, the jury deliberated about 8 hours Friday before retiring for the weekend and telling the judge they were exhausted. Jurors resume deliberations Monday.
The jury may in fact reach a unanimous agreement on a verdict and the hold-out juror may succumb to the pressure and change her mind. But the question that seems lost is “can this jury now be fair?”
(Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. He can be reached at www.ArabWritersGroup.com and by email at rayhanania@comcast.net.)
Friday, October 17, 2008
Performance: I- Fest 2008, Best of European Solo Acts
Performance: I- Fest 2008, Best of European Solo Acts
Press Release
For Immediate Release : October 2008
Contact: Zygmunt Dyrkacz 773.278.1500
info@chopintheatre.com
Description:
Fourth edition of I-Fest presents Mr. Oleg Liptsin taking on Dostoevsky's A Propos of the Wet Snow and Mr. William El-Gardi taking on the Shakespeare inspired Yasser by Abdelkader Benali. I-Fest performances (15 from 10 countries in past 3 years -- Austria, England, Finland, France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Switzerland and Ukraine) give a stage to nonconforming citizens. They choose their language, material and art form closest to their own I. They represent the growing population of individuals influenced by 21st Century new realities -- global culture, international migration, mixed marriages, and even world cuisine and attire. They dispel the myths of collective identities, often used for political and social simplification and manipulation. Reality is much richer than what's in a name.
O. Liptsin is a Russian Ukrainian and a Catholic Jew whose artistic partner is a Taiwanese woman. Sudanese Egyptian born Muslim W. El-Gardi immigrated to Switzerland and is now a citizen of the United Kingdom. The author of his play, Yasser, was born in Morrocco and now, similar to the director Teunkie van der Sluijs, is a citizen of the Netherlands. This very well received play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival was produced by the British Theatre Tours International.
So it is fitting that I-Fest is produced also by a couple of Polish/African American misfits. It also illustrates that international theater, in whatever simple and inexpensive way, can still be shown in our City.
I-Fest will also featuring the following panel discussions
The State of Race - Oct 31st 6p (Special Guest Laura Washington, Chicago Sun Times)
Staging 1 Man Show for Edinburgh Festival - Nov 2nd 630pm (Special Guest Brian Shaw, Columbia College Chicago
Shakespeare meets the Middle East - Nov 9th 630pm (Special Guest Ray Hanania)
Location:
Chopin Theatre - 1543 West Division
Dates/Times:
10/28, 31 - 7p/830p
11/1, 6, 7, 8 - 7p/830p
11/2, 9 - 3p/430p
The U.S. premiere of Yasser (60 min) will be followed by intermission and A propos. (90 min.)
Both are in English.
Tickets:
$15/ea. or 2 for $20.
Tix: 773-278-1500
Supporters:
British Council, Consul General of the Netherlands, Wicker Park/Bucktown SSA#33
More info:
http://www.studiodubbelagent.com/yasser.html
http://www.internationaltheaterensemble.com/A_PROPOS_OF_THE_WET_SNOW.html
www.i-fest.com
The Presentations
Yasser is an uncompromising, yet playful monologue by award-winning writer Abdelkader Benali. Yasser Mansour is a young, idealistic and fervent Palestinian actor, living and working in Europe. As he prepares in his dressing room to go on stage to play Shylock, the archetypal Jew in The Merchant of Venice, he finds himself torn between his Palestinian identity and the role he is about to play. He would really rather play Arafat. And Yitzhak Rabin, as he used to do as a young boy in Palestine. What's more, he has just been robbed of all his props necessary to perform his role, and dumped by his fellow actress and girlfriend Lucy, tired of his political soliloquies. It's an hour before curtain up, the pressure mounts, but where is his nose? As he maneuvers through conflicts, roles and identities, Yasser discovers that the Arab understands Shylock better than anyone else: can anyone really cut a pound of flesh without spilling blood?
Yasser was nominated for the 2008 Expression of Freedom Award by Amnesty International. Reviews and more information at http://www.studiodubbelagent.com/yasser.html.
A Propos of the Wet Snow - (Based on "Notes From Underground" by Feodor Dostoevsky).
One of the most famous literal articulations on the irrationality of the human soul has been adapted into an emotionally challenging and physically active work touching on the main problems of modern life: hatred, destruction, intellectual and physical terrorism.
These "Notes" theatrically deliver the story of the notorious Dostoevskian hero - a person from
the underground. On examples from his own life he demonstrates the paradoxical quality of the human soul - "the territory on which God and devil carry on their battle". Starting from the philosophical question about the nature of evil in the human soul our protagonist quickly moves into the anecdote from his life. Getting drunk at the farewell party with his old school fellows he challenges one of the most popular and successful members of their group. Confronting this successful young man our hero is questioning all prosperous parts of society, everyone who corrupts with public rules and lies, who represents the corpus of "life winners". In his drunken debauchery the man from the underground defends the individual truth and personal freedom against compliance with social rules and norms of behavior.
By challenging the relationship between the individual and society, Dostoevsky touches upon a most vulnerable issue of the day - why people choose a freedom of doing something that hurts them rather than complying with public rules and be rewarded for it?
Reviews and more information at http://www.internationaltheaterensemble.com/A_PROPOS_OF_THE_WET_SNOW.html
Production Team - Yasser
William El-Gardi (Yasser Mansour) was born in Egypt in 1978 in an Egyptian-Sudanese-Turkish family and grew up in Egypt, the Sudan and Switzerland before settling in the United Kingdom, where he trained at Mountview Academy in London. His most recent theatre credits include Touch by Rikki Beadle-Blair at the Tristan Bates Theatre in London, as well as the Theatre Café Symposium at the Unicorn Theatre in London with Company of Angles. He made his Edinburgh debut in 2007 in The Container by Claire Bailey which won a Fringe First and the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression award.
Other recent theatre credits include Failed States, a political Musical satire at the Pleasance Theatre,
London and Time of the Tortoise at Theatre 503 in London. UK tours of: Tangier Tattoo with
Glyndebourne Opera House, OneFourSeven with the Dende Collective/Lyric Hammersmith, and a
Welsh national tour of Flowers from Tunisia with Theatre Ibyd/Theatre Clwyd. Other theatre
includes Laters with Rikki Beadle-Blair at the Tristan Bates Theatre, Release The Beat-The Musical
with Mehmet Ergen at the Arcola Theatre and Funky Stuff at the King's Head Theatre, all in
London.
In Film and TV, William recently completed guest roles in the BBC series Whistleblowers, The Bill, and Channel 4's new drama Saddam's Tribe. Other recent credits include Last Flight to Kuwait for the BBC, a lead role in the BBC/HBO film Dirty War, and Danish Dogma feature Brothers with Suzanne Beir. Other TV includes: Spooks (series 3), and Black September-Days that Shook the World, both for the BBC, The Sketch Show-Clithero for Channel 4 and Murder Prevention for World productions/Five.
Teunkie van der Sluijs (director) was born in the Netherlands in 1981 and is a graduate of the three year directing programme at Rose Bruford College in London. Recent directing work includes productions of Robert Holman's Kerry Leaves Home (Battersea Arts Centre, London), Boris Vian's The Empire Builders (Pleasance Theatre, London), Howard Barker's Judith (Rosemary Branch Theatre, London) and The Love of a Good Man (Rose Bruford College), devised piece The Great Monkey Trial (Rose Bruford College) and The Expected, a modern opera by composers ThomasMyrmel and Wilbert Bulsink, which toured Europe in 2006-2007. College productions include Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, Don Duyn's Den Uyl and Marguerite Duras' India Song.
Van der Sluijs holds a BA and MA in Drama from the University of Amsterdam, and directed several productions in the Netherlands, including Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis, Stanislaw Witkiewicz' The Madman and the Nun and Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano, as well as co-directing a devised production based on the writings of Nikolai Gogol. His work has toured in Europe, to North America and to North Africa, where he was awarded the Récherche Théâtrale Award 2003 by the Arab theatre critic's jury at the Festival International de Monastir, Tunisia ("This masters the vocabulary of theatrical depiction; it presents us a distinguished piece of artistic work" - Le Temps). He has taught drama at the University of Amsterdam and City University London, and is currently working as coordinator of the international new writing programme at Rose Bruford College. He has taught theatre workshops in the Netherlands, the UK, Canada and Tunisia.
Van der Sluijs aims to (re)discover and re-imagine the great texts of European writers, both classic and contemporary. He has a keen interest in the dark comedic undertones of conflict - both personal and political.
Esteban Nuñez (lighting designer and technician) was born in 1975 in the Basque Country, an autonomous region in Northern Spain. He studied physical and technical theatre in France and Ireland and worked in puppet theatre, clowning and visual theatre all over Europe. He subsequently completed a BA in lighting design at Rose Bruford College London, and set up Fishylight Productions, a UK-based company in lighting design and visual imagery for performance.
Abdelkader Benali (author) was born in Morocco in 1975 and has lived in the Netherlands since 1979. He is one of the best-known contemporary writers in the Netherlands. For his debut novel Wedding by the Sea he won the prestigious Geertjan Lubberhuizenprijs, and the Prix de Meilleur Premier Roman Étranger in France ("Vivid, mythic and heartfelt" - Financial Times; "Full of verve and hilarity" - Le Soir). He was awarded the 2003 Libris Literature Award in the Netherlands. Critically acclaimed because of his lucid and insightful treatment of migrants' issues, Benali has been widely translated, and some of this work has been published in English. He reported from Beirut under siege in the 2006 Lebanese war. With Yasser, Benali won the H.G. van der Vies Award for best new play in the Netherlands in 2002; in the same year, the play was selected
for the Nederlands-Vlaams Theaterfestival, the showcase festival of the 10 best dramatic works of
the Low Countries.
Andy Sinclair-Harris (designer) was born in the United Kingdom in 1982 and trained at Rose Bruford College. He holds a degree in theatre design and an MA in Theatre Practices. He is a celebrated designer/director and concept artist with an extremely diverse portfolio including theatre, puppetry, events, parades and theme parks.
His credits include Zoetrope the first aerial show to be performed at Rose Bruford College which he both designed and directed. When the Lights Go Out an interactive, visually powerful piece and The Autumn of His Years, a production using only projection. Andy also formed the production company Kinematic, and has already become renowned for creating visually stunning performances without dialogue. He has also designed Howie the Rookie at Battersea Arts Centre in London, and And the River Weeps for The Miskin Theatre. He has also assisted Bob Crowley with the design of Disney's Tarzan and Mary Poppins, both of which ran on Broadway.
Production Team - A Propos of the Wet Snow
Oleg Liptsin (Dostoevskian Hero/Director) - Mr. Liptsin studied theater at Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS) in Moscow with Anatoly Vasiliev and Mikhail Butkevich. He worked as an actor and assistant director at renowned Moscow State Theatre "School of Dramatic Arts" (Theatre de l'Europe) under artistic direction of Anatoly Vasiliev. For 3 years Oleg performed in a worldwide known production "Six Characters In Search Of An Author" by Pirandello.In 1989 Oleg established one of the first independent theatre ensembles in Ukraine - Theater Club, Kiev - which became a leading experimental and avant-garde theatre-laboratory in the country.
In early 90s Oleg began his directing and teaching career in Europe and other parts of the world. In 1991, a short-term residence in Schaubuhne (West Berlin) while Luke Bondy was directing "The Winter's Tale" by Shakespeare. In 1993, experimental theatre/installation project "Kusma" based on Andrej Platonov in frames of art festival in Upper Austria. In 1993-94, teaching at the "Konrad Wolf" Film and TV Institute in Potsdam/Babelsberg, Germany. Later, a production based on Joyce's "Ulysses" for International Festival "Kontakt" in Poland. In 1995, teaching at the National School of Drama in Delhi, India. From 1995 Oleg Liptsin began working in USA and later - in Canada, from 2003 - in Paris.
Awarded a National Award for Experimental Work in Theatre by the Theatre Union of Ukraine, won the "Best Director" award and 4 nominations for "Best Director" and "Best Actor" in Ukraine, participated in more than 30 international festivals.Currently Mr. Liptsin works as director and professor of drama in different parts of the world. He established and conducted the post-graduate educational program in stage directing at National University of Theatre, Film and TV in Kiev, teaches acting at Slavic University in Moscow and at Shelton Theater School in San Francisco, manages the InternationalTheaterEnsemble - recently established experimental international theatrical network. Oleg Liptsin's most recent directing credits include: 'Outcry" by T.Williams, "A Propos Of The Wet Snow (notes from the underground)" by F.Dostoevsky, "The Gamblers" by N.Gogol at PODOL Theatre in Kiev, "Happy Days" by S.Beckett - ITE production in San Francisco and Berkeley, "The Living Corpse" by Leo Tolstoy at Shelton Theater in San Francisco, "Oscar" by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt in Kiev, "The Elephant Man" by B. Pomerance in San Francisco and "The Serpent-Woman" by Gozzi in Kiev. Currently Oleg works on "The Overcoat" by N.Gogol and continues his effort on developing the innovative theatrical network - ITE/InternationalTheatreEnsemble
Ai-Cheng Ho (Prostitute) - Ai-Cheng Ho was born in Tau-yuan, Taiwan. She studied acting with Oleg Liptsin at Acting International in Paris and was trained in Jacques Lecoq's acting method at the International Jacques Lecoq Theatre School in Paris and International School of Performing Arts in London.
Ai-Cheng's other performing trainings include the Chinese opera and contemporary dance, which she's mastering for years. She is trained in martial arts: Tai-ji quan and others.
Since 2004 Ai-Cheng Ho is a member of ITE, she participated in such ITE projects as 'Cherry Orchard On Plain-Air' based on Anton Chekhov, 'The Snake-Woman' by Carlo Gozzi (Commedia dell'arte) and 'Mozart and Salieri' by Pushkin.
Ai-Cheng is Master of Performing Arts with major in Film study from the University Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Kevin Quennesson (Video Art Programming) - Kevin was born in France and studied sciences in the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, leading French school of Engineering. He came to the USA in 2004 and studied philosophy at Stanford and computer vision and graphics at Georgia Tech. His interests are in the intersection of technologies and the humanities.
He showed his first work called "conscious=camera" in August 2005 at Siggraph, LA in the Emerging Technology and Art Gallery category. The "conscious=camera" based on real-time body-tracking is a poetic interpretation of the phenomenology of images expressed by JP Sartre in "L'Imagimaire". In 2006, he presented at Siggraph in Boston his "traces" installation aimed at representing people passage and absence. "traces" is featured in the large scale "quell code" (source code) Kunst an Bau installation in the new headquarters of SAP in Germany. "Quell code" was made in partnership with the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Austria.
Since 2006 Kevin is a featured artist of the Victory Media Network in Dallas, TX - largest outdoor media art gallery in the world. Kevin Quennesson now lives in California and is a software development engineer at Apple Inc.
Press Release
For Immediate Release : October 2008
Contact: Zygmunt Dyrkacz 773.278.1500
info@chopintheatre.com
Description:
Fourth edition of I-Fest presents Mr. Oleg Liptsin taking on Dostoevsky's A Propos of the Wet Snow and Mr. William El-Gardi taking on the Shakespeare inspired Yasser by Abdelkader Benali. I-Fest performances (15 from 10 countries in past 3 years -- Austria, England, Finland, France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Switzerland and Ukraine) give a stage to nonconforming citizens. They choose their language, material and art form closest to their own I. They represent the growing population of individuals influenced by 21st Century new realities -- global culture, international migration, mixed marriages, and even world cuisine and attire. They dispel the myths of collective identities, often used for political and social simplification and manipulation. Reality is much richer than what's in a name.
O. Liptsin is a Russian Ukrainian and a Catholic Jew whose artistic partner is a Taiwanese woman. Sudanese Egyptian born Muslim W. El-Gardi immigrated to Switzerland and is now a citizen of the United Kingdom. The author of his play, Yasser, was born in Morrocco and now, similar to the director Teunkie van der Sluijs, is a citizen of the Netherlands. This very well received play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival was produced by the British Theatre Tours International.
So it is fitting that I-Fest is produced also by a couple of Polish/African American misfits. It also illustrates that international theater, in whatever simple and inexpensive way, can still be shown in our City.
I-Fest will also featuring the following panel discussions
The State of Race - Oct 31st 6p (Special Guest Laura Washington, Chicago Sun Times)
Staging 1 Man Show for Edinburgh Festival - Nov 2nd 630pm (Special Guest Brian Shaw, Columbia College Chicago
Shakespeare meets the Middle East - Nov 9th 630pm (Special Guest Ray Hanania)
Location:
Chopin Theatre - 1543 West Division
Dates/Times:
10/28, 31 - 7p/830p
11/1, 6, 7, 8 - 7p/830p
11/2, 9 - 3p/430p
The U.S. premiere of Yasser (60 min) will be followed by intermission and A propos. (90 min.)
Both are in English.
Tickets:
$15/ea. or 2 for $20.
Tix: 773-278-1500
Supporters:
British Council, Consul General of the Netherlands, Wicker Park/Bucktown SSA#33
More info:
http://www.studiodubbelagent.com/yasser.html
http://www.internationaltheaterensemble.com/A_PROPOS_OF_THE_WET_SNOW.html
www.i-fest.com
The Presentations
Yasser is an uncompromising, yet playful monologue by award-winning writer Abdelkader Benali. Yasser Mansour is a young, idealistic and fervent Palestinian actor, living and working in Europe. As he prepares in his dressing room to go on stage to play Shylock, the archetypal Jew in The Merchant of Venice, he finds himself torn between his Palestinian identity and the role he is about to play. He would really rather play Arafat. And Yitzhak Rabin, as he used to do as a young boy in Palestine. What's more, he has just been robbed of all his props necessary to perform his role, and dumped by his fellow actress and girlfriend Lucy, tired of his political soliloquies. It's an hour before curtain up, the pressure mounts, but where is his nose? As he maneuvers through conflicts, roles and identities, Yasser discovers that the Arab understands Shylock better than anyone else: can anyone really cut a pound of flesh without spilling blood?
Yasser was nominated for the 2008 Expression of Freedom Award by Amnesty International. Reviews and more information at http://www.studiodubbelagent.com/yasser.html.
A Propos of the Wet Snow - (Based on "Notes From Underground" by Feodor Dostoevsky).
One of the most famous literal articulations on the irrationality of the human soul has been adapted into an emotionally challenging and physically active work touching on the main problems of modern life: hatred, destruction, intellectual and physical terrorism.
These "Notes" theatrically deliver the story of the notorious Dostoevskian hero - a person from
the underground. On examples from his own life he demonstrates the paradoxical quality of the human soul - "the territory on which God and devil carry on their battle". Starting from the philosophical question about the nature of evil in the human soul our protagonist quickly moves into the anecdote from his life. Getting drunk at the farewell party with his old school fellows he challenges one of the most popular and successful members of their group. Confronting this successful young man our hero is questioning all prosperous parts of society, everyone who corrupts with public rules and lies, who represents the corpus of "life winners". In his drunken debauchery the man from the underground defends the individual truth and personal freedom against compliance with social rules and norms of behavior.
By challenging the relationship between the individual and society, Dostoevsky touches upon a most vulnerable issue of the day - why people choose a freedom of doing something that hurts them rather than complying with public rules and be rewarded for it?
Reviews and more information at http://www.internationaltheaterensemble.com/A_PROPOS_OF_THE_WET_SNOW.html
Production Team - Yasser
William El-Gardi (Yasser Mansour) was born in Egypt in 1978 in an Egyptian-Sudanese-Turkish family and grew up in Egypt, the Sudan and Switzerland before settling in the United Kingdom, where he trained at Mountview Academy in London. His most recent theatre credits include Touch by Rikki Beadle-Blair at the Tristan Bates Theatre in London, as well as the Theatre Café Symposium at the Unicorn Theatre in London with Company of Angles. He made his Edinburgh debut in 2007 in The Container by Claire Bailey which won a Fringe First and the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression award.
Other recent theatre credits include Failed States, a political Musical satire at the Pleasance Theatre,
London and Time of the Tortoise at Theatre 503 in London. UK tours of: Tangier Tattoo with
Glyndebourne Opera House, OneFourSeven with the Dende Collective/Lyric Hammersmith, and a
Welsh national tour of Flowers from Tunisia with Theatre Ibyd/Theatre Clwyd. Other theatre
includes Laters with Rikki Beadle-Blair at the Tristan Bates Theatre, Release The Beat-The Musical
with Mehmet Ergen at the Arcola Theatre and Funky Stuff at the King's Head Theatre, all in
London.
In Film and TV, William recently completed guest roles in the BBC series Whistleblowers, The Bill, and Channel 4's new drama Saddam's Tribe. Other recent credits include Last Flight to Kuwait for the BBC, a lead role in the BBC/HBO film Dirty War, and Danish Dogma feature Brothers with Suzanne Beir. Other TV includes: Spooks (series 3), and Black September-Days that Shook the World, both for the BBC, The Sketch Show-Clithero for Channel 4 and Murder Prevention for World productions/Five.
Teunkie van der Sluijs (director) was born in the Netherlands in 1981 and is a graduate of the three year directing programme at Rose Bruford College in London. Recent directing work includes productions of Robert Holman's Kerry Leaves Home (Battersea Arts Centre, London), Boris Vian's The Empire Builders (Pleasance Theatre, London), Howard Barker's Judith (Rosemary Branch Theatre, London) and The Love of a Good Man (Rose Bruford College), devised piece The Great Monkey Trial (Rose Bruford College) and The Expected, a modern opera by composers ThomasMyrmel and Wilbert Bulsink, which toured Europe in 2006-2007. College productions include Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, Don Duyn's Den Uyl and Marguerite Duras' India Song.
Van der Sluijs holds a BA and MA in Drama from the University of Amsterdam, and directed several productions in the Netherlands, including Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis, Stanislaw Witkiewicz' The Madman and the Nun and Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano, as well as co-directing a devised production based on the writings of Nikolai Gogol. His work has toured in Europe, to North America and to North Africa, where he was awarded the Récherche Théâtrale Award 2003 by the Arab theatre critic's jury at the Festival International de Monastir, Tunisia ("This masters the vocabulary of theatrical depiction; it presents us a distinguished piece of artistic work" - Le Temps). He has taught drama at the University of Amsterdam and City University London, and is currently working as coordinator of the international new writing programme at Rose Bruford College. He has taught theatre workshops in the Netherlands, the UK, Canada and Tunisia.
Van der Sluijs aims to (re)discover and re-imagine the great texts of European writers, both classic and contemporary. He has a keen interest in the dark comedic undertones of conflict - both personal and political.
Esteban Nuñez (lighting designer and technician) was born in 1975 in the Basque Country, an autonomous region in Northern Spain. He studied physical and technical theatre in France and Ireland and worked in puppet theatre, clowning and visual theatre all over Europe. He subsequently completed a BA in lighting design at Rose Bruford College London, and set up Fishylight Productions, a UK-based company in lighting design and visual imagery for performance.
Abdelkader Benali (author) was born in Morocco in 1975 and has lived in the Netherlands since 1979. He is one of the best-known contemporary writers in the Netherlands. For his debut novel Wedding by the Sea he won the prestigious Geertjan Lubberhuizenprijs, and the Prix de Meilleur Premier Roman Étranger in France ("Vivid, mythic and heartfelt" - Financial Times; "Full of verve and hilarity" - Le Soir). He was awarded the 2003 Libris Literature Award in the Netherlands. Critically acclaimed because of his lucid and insightful treatment of migrants' issues, Benali has been widely translated, and some of this work has been published in English. He reported from Beirut under siege in the 2006 Lebanese war. With Yasser, Benali won the H.G. van der Vies Award for best new play in the Netherlands in 2002; in the same year, the play was selected
for the Nederlands-Vlaams Theaterfestival, the showcase festival of the 10 best dramatic works of
the Low Countries.
Andy Sinclair-Harris (designer) was born in the United Kingdom in 1982 and trained at Rose Bruford College. He holds a degree in theatre design and an MA in Theatre Practices. He is a celebrated designer/director and concept artist with an extremely diverse portfolio including theatre, puppetry, events, parades and theme parks.
His credits include Zoetrope the first aerial show to be performed at Rose Bruford College which he both designed and directed. When the Lights Go Out an interactive, visually powerful piece and The Autumn of His Years, a production using only projection. Andy also formed the production company Kinematic, and has already become renowned for creating visually stunning performances without dialogue. He has also designed Howie the Rookie at Battersea Arts Centre in London, and And the River Weeps for The Miskin Theatre. He has also assisted Bob Crowley with the design of Disney's Tarzan and Mary Poppins, both of which ran on Broadway.
Production Team - A Propos of the Wet Snow
Oleg Liptsin (Dostoevskian Hero/Director) - Mr. Liptsin studied theater at Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS) in Moscow with Anatoly Vasiliev and Mikhail Butkevich. He worked as an actor and assistant director at renowned Moscow State Theatre "School of Dramatic Arts" (Theatre de l'Europe) under artistic direction of Anatoly Vasiliev. For 3 years Oleg performed in a worldwide known production "Six Characters In Search Of An Author" by Pirandello.In 1989 Oleg established one of the first independent theatre ensembles in Ukraine - Theater Club, Kiev - which became a leading experimental and avant-garde theatre-laboratory in the country.
In early 90s Oleg began his directing and teaching career in Europe and other parts of the world. In 1991, a short-term residence in Schaubuhne (West Berlin) while Luke Bondy was directing "The Winter's Tale" by Shakespeare. In 1993, experimental theatre/installation project "Kusma" based on Andrej Platonov in frames of art festival in Upper Austria. In 1993-94, teaching at the "Konrad Wolf" Film and TV Institute in Potsdam/Babelsberg, Germany. Later, a production based on Joyce's "Ulysses" for International Festival "Kontakt" in Poland. In 1995, teaching at the National School of Drama in Delhi, India. From 1995 Oleg Liptsin began working in USA and later - in Canada, from 2003 - in Paris.
Awarded a National Award for Experimental Work in Theatre by the Theatre Union of Ukraine, won the "Best Director" award and 4 nominations for "Best Director" and "Best Actor" in Ukraine, participated in more than 30 international festivals.Currently Mr. Liptsin works as director and professor of drama in different parts of the world. He established and conducted the post-graduate educational program in stage directing at National University of Theatre, Film and TV in Kiev, teaches acting at Slavic University in Moscow and at Shelton Theater School in San Francisco, manages the InternationalTheaterEnsemble - recently established experimental international theatrical network. Oleg Liptsin's most recent directing credits include: 'Outcry" by T.Williams, "A Propos Of The Wet Snow (notes from the underground)" by F.Dostoevsky, "The Gamblers" by N.Gogol at PODOL Theatre in Kiev, "Happy Days" by S.Beckett - ITE production in San Francisco and Berkeley, "The Living Corpse" by Leo Tolstoy at Shelton Theater in San Francisco, "Oscar" by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt in Kiev, "The Elephant Man" by B. Pomerance in San Francisco and "The Serpent-Woman" by Gozzi in Kiev. Currently Oleg works on "The Overcoat" by N.Gogol and continues his effort on developing the innovative theatrical network - ITE/InternationalTheatreEnsemble
Ai-Cheng Ho (Prostitute) - Ai-Cheng Ho was born in Tau-yuan, Taiwan. She studied acting with Oleg Liptsin at Acting International in Paris and was trained in Jacques Lecoq's acting method at the International Jacques Lecoq Theatre School in Paris and International School of Performing Arts in London.
Ai-Cheng's other performing trainings include the Chinese opera and contemporary dance, which she's mastering for years. She is trained in martial arts: Tai-ji quan and others.
Since 2004 Ai-Cheng Ho is a member of ITE, she participated in such ITE projects as 'Cherry Orchard On Plain-Air' based on Anton Chekhov, 'The Snake-Woman' by Carlo Gozzi (Commedia dell'arte) and 'Mozart and Salieri' by Pushkin.
Ai-Cheng is Master of Performing Arts with major in Film study from the University Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Kevin Quennesson (Video Art Programming) - Kevin was born in France and studied sciences in the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, leading French school of Engineering. He came to the USA in 2004 and studied philosophy at Stanford and computer vision and graphics at Georgia Tech. His interests are in the intersection of technologies and the humanities.
He showed his first work called "conscious=camera" in August 2005 at Siggraph, LA in the Emerging Technology and Art Gallery category. The "conscious=camera" based on real-time body-tracking is a poetic interpretation of the phenomenology of images expressed by JP Sartre in "L'Imagimaire". In 2006, he presented at Siggraph in Boston his "traces" installation aimed at representing people passage and absence. "traces" is featured in the large scale "quell code" (source code) Kunst an Bau installation in the new headquarters of SAP in Germany. "Quell code" was made in partnership with the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Austria.
Since 2006 Kevin is a featured artist of the Victory Media Network in Dallas, TX - largest outdoor media art gallery in the world. Kevin Quennesson now lives in California and is a software development engineer at Apple Inc.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Jeff Mazon trial: A case of speculation and circumstance; but where is evidence?
Jeff Mazon Trial - a case of speculation and circumstance; Where is evidence?
The trial of Jeff Mazon, a former Halliburton employee accused of inflating a war-related contract in exchange for a kickback, enters its third week in a Federal courtroom in Peoria.
This case was tried once before in Rock Island before the same judge and by the same prosecutors, and with the exact same evidence. The jury in the last trial deadlocked, failing to reach a decision.
The deadlocked Rock Island jury obviously was not overwhelmingly conviced that Mazon was guilty of the crimes charged and was in fact an innocent man. U.S. Attorney Jeffrey B. Lang, insists it was not a majority but declined to disclose how many jurors did in fact support conviction versus acquittal.
Having reported on the first trial, the only thing new about this trial is déjà vu. The same witnesses. The same accusations. Nothing new, so why are we here again?
Mazon's defense is solid. He admits that a calculation error was committed on the contract in questions, but a mistake is not intentional criminal conduct. The prosecutors insist he inflated the price on purpose in order to receive a "bribe" that was paid to him six months after he left the company, even though the error was later discovered. In the end, the inflated payment amount was corrected.
The contract was among thousands of contracts issued to support the war effort in Iraq in early 2003. It was issued in Kuwait Dinars. Each Kuwaiti Dinar is equal to 3.3 U.S. Dollars. The spreadsheet used to calculate the conversion mistakenly increased the dollar amount instead of converting the Kuwait Dinars into U.S. Dollars.
Mazon and his attorneys have always alleged this case is little more than an effort by Halliburton and the Bush administration to make Mazon into a "scapegoat," taking attention away from the bigger issues of corruption involving the war itself and the role that Halliburton has played in managing the contracts.
Bush wants the American public to believe something is being done about allegations of war-related corruption that are rampant, but not enough so that the public might ask the logical question: "If there is so much corruption under Halliburton's watch, why is Halliburton and its subsidiaries continuing to receive the lucrative contract business?"
Halliburton was formerly owned by Dick Cheney, the U.S. Vice President. Many expect Cheney to return to Halliburton when his term ends this year.
The prosecutors failed to convince the jury the first time that Mazon committed any crime. And they haven't presented any new evidence in this second trial to suggest the outcome will be any different.
Last week, we heard testimony from a number of prosecution witnesses who failed to make a connection between the allegedly intentionally "inflated" contract bid of a Kuwaiti company and the million dollar loan that Mazon received over 5 months after he left his job with Halliburton.
The testimony of each and every government witness was speculative and inconclusive. They could not say with certainty that the contract in question was intentionally inflated. How could jurors reach that conclusion?
There are no eye-witnesses to a "deal." No evidence of a conspiracy between Mazon and the Kuwaiti contractor to inflate the contract in exchange for anything. All there is before the jury is the prosecution's assertions and an Excel Spreadsheet with a poorly constructed formula that each time miscalculates the final amount with an embedded inaccurate formula.
It is also a fact that Mazon did enter into a business relationship with a Kuwait businessman and his company.
But, before Mazon engaged in private business with the Kuwaiti, he left Halliburton and worked for the Athens Olympics in Greece for at least six months.
The prosecution's allegation that the loan Mazon received from the Kuwaiti contractor was a "kickback" in exchange for the inflated contract price is weak. The loan is not connected in time or logic to Mazon's employment with Halliburton. There is no testimony other than suspicion.
Additionally, the loan was in the form of a draft check that was declared to U.S. customs when Mazon entered the U.S. Attempts to deposit it in an "off-shore account" was at the direction of the bank in Greece where he was working at the time, six months after leaving Halliburton's employ. The "loan" eventually never materialized, the check was never cashed and no money exchanged hands.
As I prepare myself to sit through yet another week of trial, I cannot help but think about how these wasted dollars could have been better spent by the Bush administration. One failed attempt to convict should have been the end of this apparently never-ending story.
- Ray Hanania
The trial of Jeff Mazon, a former Halliburton employee accused of inflating a war-related contract in exchange for a kickback, enters its third week in a Federal courtroom in Peoria.
This case was tried once before in Rock Island before the same judge and by the same prosecutors, and with the exact same evidence. The jury in the last trial deadlocked, failing to reach a decision.
The deadlocked Rock Island jury obviously was not overwhelmingly conviced that Mazon was guilty of the crimes charged and was in fact an innocent man. U.S. Attorney Jeffrey B. Lang, insists it was not a majority but declined to disclose how many jurors did in fact support conviction versus acquittal.
Having reported on the first trial, the only thing new about this trial is déjà vu. The same witnesses. The same accusations. Nothing new, so why are we here again?
Mazon's defense is solid. He admits that a calculation error was committed on the contract in questions, but a mistake is not intentional criminal conduct. The prosecutors insist he inflated the price on purpose in order to receive a "bribe" that was paid to him six months after he left the company, even though the error was later discovered. In the end, the inflated payment amount was corrected.
The contract was among thousands of contracts issued to support the war effort in Iraq in early 2003. It was issued in Kuwait Dinars. Each Kuwaiti Dinar is equal to 3.3 U.S. Dollars. The spreadsheet used to calculate the conversion mistakenly increased the dollar amount instead of converting the Kuwait Dinars into U.S. Dollars.
Mazon and his attorneys have always alleged this case is little more than an effort by Halliburton and the Bush administration to make Mazon into a "scapegoat," taking attention away from the bigger issues of corruption involving the war itself and the role that Halliburton has played in managing the contracts.
Bush wants the American public to believe something is being done about allegations of war-related corruption that are rampant, but not enough so that the public might ask the logical question: "If there is so much corruption under Halliburton's watch, why is Halliburton and its subsidiaries continuing to receive the lucrative contract business?"
Halliburton was formerly owned by Dick Cheney, the U.S. Vice President. Many expect Cheney to return to Halliburton when his term ends this year.
The prosecutors failed to convince the jury the first time that Mazon committed any crime. And they haven't presented any new evidence in this second trial to suggest the outcome will be any different.
Last week, we heard testimony from a number of prosecution witnesses who failed to make a connection between the allegedly intentionally "inflated" contract bid of a Kuwaiti company and the million dollar loan that Mazon received over 5 months after he left his job with Halliburton.
The testimony of each and every government witness was speculative and inconclusive. They could not say with certainty that the contract in question was intentionally inflated. How could jurors reach that conclusion?
There are no eye-witnesses to a "deal." No evidence of a conspiracy between Mazon and the Kuwaiti contractor to inflate the contract in exchange for anything. All there is before the jury is the prosecution's assertions and an Excel Spreadsheet with a poorly constructed formula that each time miscalculates the final amount with an embedded inaccurate formula.
It is also a fact that Mazon did enter into a business relationship with a Kuwait businessman and his company.
But, before Mazon engaged in private business with the Kuwaiti, he left Halliburton and worked for the Athens Olympics in Greece for at least six months.
The prosecution's allegation that the loan Mazon received from the Kuwaiti contractor was a "kickback" in exchange for the inflated contract price is weak. The loan is not connected in time or logic to Mazon's employment with Halliburton. There is no testimony other than suspicion.
Additionally, the loan was in the form of a draft check that was declared to U.S. customs when Mazon entered the U.S. Attempts to deposit it in an "off-shore account" was at the direction of the bank in Greece where he was working at the time, six months after leaving Halliburton's employ. The "loan" eventually never materialized, the check was never cashed and no money exchanged hands.
As I prepare myself to sit through yet another week of trial, I cannot help but think about how these wasted dollars could have been better spent by the Bush administration. One failed attempt to convict should have been the end of this apparently never-ending story.
- Ray Hanania
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The shame of Sen. John McCain's father in covering up the massacrer of 34 Americans on June 8, 1967
On June 8, 1967, the Israeli military was in the midst of a war with its Arab neighbors. At the time, they were engaged int he battle and did not fully grasp how easily the Arab nation's armies had collapsed -- they were never a real threat to Israel. Israel wanted the United States -- which was already supplying Israel with military supplies from American military stockpiles -- to also enter the war and attack Egypt, which was a client state at the time of the Soviet Union.
On June 8, 1967, Israel's air force was monitoring an American Naval Vessel, a spy ship, that was monitoring the war for the US Navy. The ship was the U.S.S. Liberty. The Israeli air force had monitored the ship for 7 hours. Suddenly, the Israeli planes disappeared. They were replaced minutes later by unmarked fighter jets that launched a massive assault on the ship which only had a few guns and cannons but was not a fighter vessel. The attack killed 10 American sailors.
The Liberty soldiers, who were pro-Israel and supporting Israel at the time, ran to the deck to wave American flags, but the jets kept firing ont he ship killing many of the sailors as they waved the American flags. Scores were wounded.
The ships captain immediately signaled an SOS to the commander of the 6th Fleet, who also immediately issued an order for American forces to respond and defend the U.S.S. Liberty. But within minutes, the order was contermanded and revoked by the 6th Fleet Commander and the rescue and defense American forces were ordered to stand down and return to their ships.
The order to not defend the Liberty came directly from Admiral John McCain, Senator McCain's father. Admiral McCain ordered that the 6th Fleet immediately withdraw its rescue and defense operation partly because he did not want the American forces to directly engage the Israelis.
When the order not to intervene was issued, the Israeli returned with five torpedo boats that were clearly marked with Israeli flags and the Star of David. The torpedo boats fired five torpedoes at the U.S.S. Liberty. Onew of the torpedoes was a direct hit and struck the U.S.S. Liberty and killed 24 more American soldiers.
In the meantime, the commander of the 6th Fleet was fighting with Admiral McCain demanding that support be sent to DEFEND AMERICAN LIVES. It was no longer about Israel and the Arab coutnries but about AMERICAN LIVES. Admiral McCain could have issued orders to intervene, even though President Lyndon Baines Johnson was now involved in the discussions about the war and the incident involving the U.S.S. Liberty. LBJ was quoted as saying that despite the tragedy of the attack on the Liberty, he did not want to do anything that would expose Israel to defeat at the hands of the Arab nations -- remember, no one knew for sure, especially among the Americans, how easily the Israelis would defeat the Arab armies.
Admiral McCain's actions COST THE LIVES OF 24 AMERICANS who were killed AFTER the first attack and when it was clear the ship could have been defended.
The Israelis returned a third time assaulting the ship this time with helicopter gunships filled with heavily armed Israeli soldiers who were preparing to storm the ship. Their goal was to kill every last American on the U.S.S. Liberty as it became apparent to the Israelis that their plan to destroy and sink the Liberty had failed, that there were witnesses and that they feared the massacre of Americans would result in destroying their relationship with the United States. But before the troops could be ordered to assault, the Israelis realized that the battle among the American military leaders was now a major issue and it was clear that the Israelis had been identified not only by the survivors on the U.S.S. Liberty as being Israeli, but also by the commander of the 6th Fleet.
The assault helicopters were called back.
After the incident, Admiral McCain sent a commander to meet with the ship's survivors and he ordered them to keep their mouths shut or to face court marshal. If anyone EVER discussed what happened, they would be punished.
For years, no one spoke out about theinjustice. Then, survivors began to fight back publishing several books about what they saw with their own eyes, and challenging the Israeli propaganda that the ship was attacked "by accident," which was now the "official version" that was endorsed by the Israelis and the John administration and by Admiral McCain.
In response, Israel's powerful lobby produced its own material and a bookw as wwritten by a pro-Israel apologist which claimed the attack was an accident and that the allegations by the eyewitnesses on the boat, and the documents, were false. It further claimed that 10 official investigations were conducted and all concluded that the attack was an accident. The truth was, there was only one official Military Probe and it refused to blame Israel. testimony from the survivors at the investigation were censored and charges that the Israelis intentionally attacked the ship were rmeoved from the official record.
How does Sen. John McCain come into the picture. His father was the commander during the Gulf of Tonkin incident in which the United States and John administration faked up an attack on an American ship to allow American forceds to invade and bomb North Vietnam. The attack never took place, but Johnson got what he wanted, an excuse to enter the Vietnam War in full force with the backing of the American people who thought the Vietnamese had in fact attacked and killed Americans.
Senator John McCain acted to defend his father's honor and he endorsed the propaganda, pro-Israel book version of the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty introducing it to the U.S. Senate and declaring that this book by an outsider an dproagandist for Israel was in fact the official version of what happened. He then introduced the book to the Library of Congress to further cement the lie and to cover-up for his father's betrayal of the American soldiers and the American people and truth.
Senator John McCain owes the American people an apology. And, he can make this right by standing up and demanding a full and uncensored public investigation into how America turned its back on its fighting men on June 8, 1967 in order to protect an ally it viewed crucial to the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Senator McCain can show he is a leader by exposing the truth about his father's misdeed and to stand up for the families of the 34 brave men who were murdered by israel on June 8, 1967, and for the survivors and their families who have endured ridicule, shame and insult over the years for simply trying to tell the truth.
You can hear the story of the shameful coverup by Admiral John McCain and Sen. John McCain and the details of the massacre on my radio show (in both audio and video podcast) at www.RadioChicagoland.com.
Regardless of whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, the way our American soldiers were mistreated is shameful and remains a black spot on the honor of this country. It MUST be corrected and clarified and truth MUST be allowed to come out. The survivors of the Israeli massacre of 34 Americans must be given the chance to tell the truth, and the cowards who have shamefully tried to cover up and protect Israel's actions deserve to experience the same ridicule and persecution that the survivors, American soldiers and their families, have been forced to endure for more than 40 years.
-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com.
On June 8, 1967, Israel's air force was monitoring an American Naval Vessel, a spy ship, that was monitoring the war for the US Navy. The ship was the U.S.S. Liberty. The Israeli air force had monitored the ship for 7 hours. Suddenly, the Israeli planes disappeared. They were replaced minutes later by unmarked fighter jets that launched a massive assault on the ship which only had a few guns and cannons but was not a fighter vessel. The attack killed 10 American sailors.
The Liberty soldiers, who were pro-Israel and supporting Israel at the time, ran to the deck to wave American flags, but the jets kept firing ont he ship killing many of the sailors as they waved the American flags. Scores were wounded.
The ships captain immediately signaled an SOS to the commander of the 6th Fleet, who also immediately issued an order for American forces to respond and defend the U.S.S. Liberty. But within minutes, the order was contermanded and revoked by the 6th Fleet Commander and the rescue and defense American forces were ordered to stand down and return to their ships.
The order to not defend the Liberty came directly from Admiral John McCain, Senator McCain's father. Admiral McCain ordered that the 6th Fleet immediately withdraw its rescue and defense operation partly because he did not want the American forces to directly engage the Israelis.
When the order not to intervene was issued, the Israeli returned with five torpedo boats that were clearly marked with Israeli flags and the Star of David. The torpedo boats fired five torpedoes at the U.S.S. Liberty. Onew of the torpedoes was a direct hit and struck the U.S.S. Liberty and killed 24 more American soldiers.
In the meantime, the commander of the 6th Fleet was fighting with Admiral McCain demanding that support be sent to DEFEND AMERICAN LIVES. It was no longer about Israel and the Arab coutnries but about AMERICAN LIVES. Admiral McCain could have issued orders to intervene, even though President Lyndon Baines Johnson was now involved in the discussions about the war and the incident involving the U.S.S. Liberty. LBJ was quoted as saying that despite the tragedy of the attack on the Liberty, he did not want to do anything that would expose Israel to defeat at the hands of the Arab nations -- remember, no one knew for sure, especially among the Americans, how easily the Israelis would defeat the Arab armies.
Admiral McCain's actions COST THE LIVES OF 24 AMERICANS who were killed AFTER the first attack and when it was clear the ship could have been defended.
The Israelis returned a third time assaulting the ship this time with helicopter gunships filled with heavily armed Israeli soldiers who were preparing to storm the ship. Their goal was to kill every last American on the U.S.S. Liberty as it became apparent to the Israelis that their plan to destroy and sink the Liberty had failed, that there were witnesses and that they feared the massacre of Americans would result in destroying their relationship with the United States. But before the troops could be ordered to assault, the Israelis realized that the battle among the American military leaders was now a major issue and it was clear that the Israelis had been identified not only by the survivors on the U.S.S. Liberty as being Israeli, but also by the commander of the 6th Fleet.
The assault helicopters were called back.
After the incident, Admiral McCain sent a commander to meet with the ship's survivors and he ordered them to keep their mouths shut or to face court marshal. If anyone EVER discussed what happened, they would be punished.
For years, no one spoke out about theinjustice. Then, survivors began to fight back publishing several books about what they saw with their own eyes, and challenging the Israeli propaganda that the ship was attacked "by accident," which was now the "official version" that was endorsed by the Israelis and the John administration and by Admiral McCain.
In response, Israel's powerful lobby produced its own material and a bookw as wwritten by a pro-Israel apologist which claimed the attack was an accident and that the allegations by the eyewitnesses on the boat, and the documents, were false. It further claimed that 10 official investigations were conducted and all concluded that the attack was an accident. The truth was, there was only one official Military Probe and it refused to blame Israel. testimony from the survivors at the investigation were censored and charges that the Israelis intentionally attacked the ship were rmeoved from the official record.
How does Sen. John McCain come into the picture. His father was the commander during the Gulf of Tonkin incident in which the United States and John administration faked up an attack on an American ship to allow American forceds to invade and bomb North Vietnam. The attack never took place, but Johnson got what he wanted, an excuse to enter the Vietnam War in full force with the backing of the American people who thought the Vietnamese had in fact attacked and killed Americans.
Senator John McCain acted to defend his father's honor and he endorsed the propaganda, pro-Israel book version of the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty introducing it to the U.S. Senate and declaring that this book by an outsider an dproagandist for Israel was in fact the official version of what happened. He then introduced the book to the Library of Congress to further cement the lie and to cover-up for his father's betrayal of the American soldiers and the American people and truth.
Senator John McCain owes the American people an apology. And, he can make this right by standing up and demanding a full and uncensored public investigation into how America turned its back on its fighting men on June 8, 1967 in order to protect an ally it viewed crucial to the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Senator McCain can show he is a leader by exposing the truth about his father's misdeed and to stand up for the families of the 34 brave men who were murdered by israel on June 8, 1967, and for the survivors and their families who have endured ridicule, shame and insult over the years for simply trying to tell the truth.
You can hear the story of the shameful coverup by Admiral John McCain and Sen. John McCain and the details of the massacre on my radio show (in both audio and video podcast) at www.RadioChicagoland.com.
Regardless of whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, the way our American soldiers were mistreated is shameful and remains a black spot on the honor of this country. It MUST be corrected and clarified and truth MUST be allowed to come out. The survivors of the Israeli massacre of 34 Americans must be given the chance to tell the truth, and the cowards who have shamefully tried to cover up and protect Israel's actions deserve to experience the same ridicule and persecution that the survivors, American soldiers and their families, have been forced to endure for more than 40 years.
-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com.
Friday, October 10, 2008
A Propos of the Wet Snow – (Based on “Notes From Underground” by Feodor Dostoevsky) in Chicago
Press Release
For Immediate Release : October 2008
Contact: Zygmunt Dyrkacz 773.278.1500
info@chopintheatre.com
Performance: I- Fest 2008, Best of European Solo Acts
Description: Fourth edition of I-Fest presents Mr. Oleg Liptsin taking on Dostoevsky’s "A Propos of the Wet Snow " and Mr. William El-Gardi taking on the Shakespeare inspired Yasser by Abdelkader Benali.
I-Fest performances (15 from 10 countries in past 3 years –- Austria, England, Finland, France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Switzerland and Ukraine) give a stage to nonconforming citizens. They choose their language, material and art form closest to their own I. They represent the growing population of individuals influenced by 21st Century new realities -- global culture, international migration, mixed marriages, and even world cuisine and attire. They dispel the myths of collective identities, often used for political and social simplification and manipulation. Reality is much richer than what’s in a name.
O. Liptsin is a Russian Ukrainian and a Catholic Jew whose artistic partner is a Taiwanese woman. Sudanese Egyptian born Muslim W. El-Gardi immigrated to Switzerland and is now a citizen of the United Kingdom. The author of his play, Yasser, was born in Morrocco and now, similar to the director Teunkie van der Sluijs, is a citizen of the Netherlands. This very well received play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival was produced by the British Theatre Tours International.
So it is fitting that I-Fest is produced also by a couple of Polish/African American misfits. It also illustrates that international theater, in whatever simple and inexpensive way, can still be shown in our City.
I-Fest will also featuring the following panel discussions
The State of Race
Shakespeare meets the Middle East
Pan European collaboration in theater practices
Staging the one-man show for Edinburgh Festival
Location: Chopin Theatre - 1543 West Division
Dates/Times: 10/28, 31 - 7p/830p 11/1, 6, 7, 8 – 7p/830p 11/2, 9 – 3p/430p
The U.S. premiere of Yasser (60 min) will be followed by intermission and A propos… (90 min.)
Tickets: $15/ea. or 2 for $20. Tix: 773-278-1500
Supporters: British Council, Consul General of the Netherlands, Wicker Park/Bucktown SSA#33
More info: http://www.studiodubbelagent.com/yasser.html
http://www.internationaltheaterensemble.com/A_PROPOS_OF_THE_WET_SNOW.html
www.i-fest.com
The Presentations
Yasser is an uncompromising, yet playful monologue by award-winning writer Abdelkader Benali. Yasser Mansour is a young, idealistic and fervent Palestinian actor, living and working in Europe. As he prepares in his dressing room to go on stage to play Shylock, the archetypal Jew in The Merchant of Venice, he finds himself torn between his Palestinian identity and the role he is about to play. He would really rather play Arafat. And Yitzhak Rabin, as he used to do as a young boy in Palestine. What's more, he has just been robbed of all his props necessary to perform his role, and dumped by his fellow actress and girlfriend Lucy, tired of his political soliloquies. It's an hour before curtain up, the pressure mounts, but where is his nose? As he maneuvers through conflicts, roles and identities, Yasser discovers that the Arab understands Shylock better than anyone else: can anyone really cut a pound of flesh without spilling blood?
Yasser was nominated for the 2008 Expression of Freedom Award by Amnesty International. Reviews and more information at http://www.studiodubbelagent.com/yasser.html.
A Propos of the Wet Snow – (Based on “Notes From Underground” by Feodor Dostoevsky).
One of the most famous literal articulations on the irrationality of the human soul has been adapted into an emotionally challenging and physically active work touching on the main problems of modern life: hatred, destruction, intellectual and physical terrorism.
These “Notes” theatrically deliver the story of the notorious Dostoevskian hero – a person from
the underground. On examples from his own life he demonstrates the paradoxical quality of the human soul – “the territory on which God and devil carry on their battle”. Starting from the philosophical question about the nature of evil in the human soul our protagonist quickly moves into the anecdote from his life. Getting drunk at the farewell party with his old school fellows he challenges one of the most popular and successful members of their group. Confronting this successful young man our hero is questioning all prosperous parts of society, everyone who corrupts with public rules and lies, who represents the corpus of “life winners”. In his drunken debauchery the man from the underground defends the individual truth and personal freedom against compliance with social rules and norms of behavior.
By challenging the relationship between the individual and society, Dostoevsky touches upon a most vulnerable issue of the day – why people choose a freedom of doing something that hurts them rather than complying with public rules and be rewarded for it?
Reviews and more information at http://www.internationaltheaterensemble.com/A_PROPOS_OF_THE_WET_SNOW.html
Production Team - Yasser
William El-Gardi (Yasser Mansour) was born in Egypt in 1978 in an Egyptian-Sudanese-Turkish
family and grew up in Egypt, the Sudan and Switzerland before settling in the United Kingdom,
where he trained at Mountview Academy in London. His most recent theatre credits include Touch
by Rikki Beadle-Blair at the Tristan Bates Theatre in London, as well as the Theatre Café
Symposium at the Unicorn Theatre in London with Company of Angles. He made his Edinburgh
debut in 2007 in The Container by Claire Bailey which won a Fringe First and the Amnesty
International Freedom of Expression award.
Other recent theatre credits include Failed States, a political Musical satire at the Pleasance Theatre,
London and Time of the Tortoise at Theatre 503 in London. UK tours of: Tangier Tattoo with
Glyndebourne Opera House, OneFourSeven with the Dende Collective/Lyric Hammersmith, and a
Welsh national tour of Flowers from Tunisia with Theatre Ibyd/Theatre Clwyd. Other theatre
includes Laters with Rikki Beadle-Blair at the Tristan Bates Theatre, Release The Beat-The Musical
with Mehmet Ergen at the Arcola Theatre and Funky Stuff at the King’s Head Theatre, all in
London.
In Film and TV, William recently completed guest roles in the BBC series Whistleblowers, The
Bill, and Channel 4's new drama Saddam's Tribe. Other recent credits include Last Flight to Kuwait
for the BBC, a lead role in the BBC/HBO film Dirty War, and Danish Dogma feature Brothers with
Suzanne Beir. Other TV includes: Spooks (series 3), and Black September-Days that Shook the
World, both for the BBC, The Sketch Show-Clithero for Channel 4 and Murder Prevention for
World productions/Five.
Teunkie van der Sluijs (director) was born in the Netherlands in 1981 and is a graduate of the
three year directing programme at Rose Bruford College in London. Recent directing work includes
productions of Robert Holman’s Kerry Leaves Home (Battersea Arts Centre, London), Boris Vian’s
The Empire Builders (Pleasance Theatre, London), Howard Barker’s Judith (Rosemary Branch
Theatre, London) and The Love of a Good Man (Rose Bruford College), devised piece The Great
Monkey Trial (Rose Bruford College) and The Expected, a modern opera by composers Thomas
Myrmel and Wilbert Bulsink, which toured Europe in 2006-2007. College productions include
Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Don Duyn’s Den Uyl and
Marguerite Duras’ India Song.
Van der Sluijs holds a BA and MA in Drama from the University of Amsterdam, and directed
several productions in the Netherlands, including Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, Stanislaw
Witkiewicz’ The Madman and the Nun and Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, as well as
co-directing a devised production based on the writings of Nikolai Gogol. His work has toured in
Europe, to North America and to North Africa, where he was awarded the Récherche Théâtrale
Award 2003 by the Arab theatre critic’s jury at the Festival International de Monastir, Tunisia
(“This masters the vocabulary of theatrical depiction; it presents us a distinguished piece of artistic
work” - Le Temps). He has taught drama at the University of Amsterdam and City University
London, and is currently working as coordinator of the international new writing programme at
Rose Bruford College. He has taught theatre workshops in the Netherlands, the UK, Canada and
Tunisia.
Van der Sluijs aims to (re)discover and re-imagine the great texts of European writers, both classic
and contemporary. He has a keen interest in the dark comedic undertones of conflict - both personal
and political.
Esteban Nuñez (lighting designer and technician) was born in 1975 in the Basque Country, an
autonomous region in Northern Spain. He studied physical and technical theatre in France and
Ireland and worked in puppet theatre, clowning and visual theatre all over Europe. He subsequently
completed a BA in lighting design at Rose Bruford College London, and set up Fishylight
Productions, a UK-based company in lighting design and visual imagery for performance.
Abdelkader Benali (author) was born in Morocco in 1975 and has lived in the Netherlands since
1979. He is one of the best-known contemporary writers in the Netherlands. For his debut novel
Wedding by the Sea he won the prestigious Geertjan Lubberhuizenprijs, and the Prix de Meilleur
Premier Roman Étranger in France (“Vivid, mythic and heartfelt” – Financial Times; “Full of verve
and hilarity” – Le Soir). He was awarded the 2003 Libris Literature Award in the Netherlands.
Critically acclaimed because of his lucid and insightful treatment of migrants’ issues, Benali has
been widely translated, and some of this work has been published in English. He reported from
Beirut under siege in the 2006 Lebanese war. With Yasser, Benali won the H.G. van der Vies
Award for best new play in the Netherlands in 2002; in the same year, the play was selected
for the Nederlands-Vlaams Theaterfestival, the showcase festival of the 10 best dramatic works of
the Low Countries.
Andy Sinclair-Harris (designer) was born in the United Kingdom in 1982 and trained at Rose
Bruford College. He holds a degree in theatre design and an MA in Theatre Practices. He is a
celebrated designer/director and concept artist with an extremely diverse portfolio including theatre,
puppetry, events, parades and theme parks.
His credits include Zoetrope the first aerial show to be performed at Rose Bruford College which he
both designed and directed. When the Lights Go Out an interactive, visually powerful piece and The
Autumn of His Years, a production using only projection. Andy also formed the production
company Kinematic, and has already become renowned for creating visually stunning performances
without dialogue. He has also designed Howie the Rookie at Battersea Arts Centre in London, and
And the River Weeps for The Miskin Theatre. He has also assisted Bob Crowley with the design of
Disney’s Tarzan and Mary Poppins, both of which ran on Broadway.
Production Team – A Propos of the Wet Snow
Oleg Liptsin (Dostoevskian Hero/Director) - Mr. Liptsin studied theater at Russian Academy
of Theatre Arts (GITIS) in Moscow with Anatoly Vasiliev and Mikhail Butkevich. He worked as
an actor and assistant director at renowned Moscow State Theatre “School of Dramatic Arts”
(Theatre de l’Europe) under artistic direction of Anatoly Vasiliev. For 3 years Oleg performed in
a worldwide known production “Six Characters In Search Of An Author” by Pirandello.
In 1989 Oleg established one of the first independent theatre ensembles in Ukraine – Theater Club, Kiev – which became a leading experimental and avant-garde theatre-laboratory in the country.
In early 90s Oleg began his directing and teaching career in Europe and other parts of the world. In 1991, a short-term residence in Schaubuhne (West Berlin) while Luke Bondy was directing “The Winter’s Tale” by Shakespeare. In 1993, experimental theatre/installation project “Kusma” based on Andrej Platonov in frames of art festival in Upper Austria. In 1993-94, teaching at the “Konrad Wolf” Film and TV Institute in Potsdam/Babelsberg, Germany. Later, a production based on Joyce’s “Ulysses” for International Festival “Kontakt” in Poland. In 1995, teaching at the National
School of Drama in Delhi, India. From 1995 Oleg Liptsin began working in USA and later – in Canada, from 2003 - in Paris.
Awarded a National Award for Experimental Work in Theatre by the Theatre Union of Ukraine, won the “Best Director” award and 4 nominations for “Best Director” and “Best Actor” in Ukraine, participated in more than 30 international festivals.
Currently Mr. Liptsin works as director and professor of drama in different parts of the world. He established and conducted the post-graduate educational program in stage directing at National University of Theatre, Film and TV in Kiev, teaches acting at Slavic University in Moscow and at Shelton Theater School in San Francisco, manages the InternationalTheaterEnsemble – recently established experimental international theatrical network.
Oleg Liptsin’s most recent directing credits include: 'Outcry" by T.Williams, "A Propos Of The Wet Snow (notes from the underground)" by F.Dostoevsky, “The Gamblers” by N.Gogol at PODOL Theatre in Kiev, “Happy Days” by S.Beckett – ITE production in San Francisco and Berkeley, “The Living Corpse” by Leo Tolstoy at Shelton Theater in San Francisco, “Oscar” by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt in Kiev, “The Elephant Man” by B. Pomerance in San Francisco and “The Serpent-Woman” by Gozzi in Kiev. Currently Oleg works on “The Overcoat” by N.Gogol and continues his effort on developing the innovative theatrical network – ITE/InternationalTheatreEnsemble
Ai-Cheng Ho (Prostitute) – Ai-Cheng Ho was born in Tau-yuan, Taiwan. She studied acting with
Oleg Liptsin at Acting International in Paris and was trained in Jacques Lecoq’s acting method at
the International Jacques Lecoq Theatre School in Paris and International School of Performing
Arts in London.
Ai-Cheng’s other performing trainings include the Chinese opera and contemporary dance, which
she’s mastering for years. She is trained in martial arts: Tai-ji quan and others.
Since 2004 Ai-Cheng Ho is a member of ITE, she participated in such ITE projects as ‘Cherry
Orchard On Plain-Air’ based on Anton Chekhov, ‘The Snake-Woman’ by Carlo Gozzi (Commedia
dell’arte) and ‘Mozart and Salieri’ by Pushkin.
Ai-Cheng is Master of Performing Arts with major in Film study from the University Paris
I-Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Kevin Quennesson (Video Art Programming) – Kevin was born in France and studied sciences in
the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, leading French school of Engineering. He came to the USA in
2004 and studied philosophy at Stanford and computer vision and graphics at GeorgiaTech. His
interests are in the intersection of technologies and the humanities.
He showed his first work called “conscious=camera” in August 2005 at Siggraph, LA in the
Emerging Technology and Art Gallery category. The “conscious=camera” based on real-time
body-tracking is a poetic interpretation of the phenomenology of images expressed by JP Sartre in
“L'Imagimaire”.
In 2006, he presented at Siggraph in Boston his "traces" installation aimed at representing people
passage and absence. "traces" is featured in the large scale "quell code" (source code) Kunst an Bau
installation in the new headquarters of SAP in Germany. "Quell code" was made in partnership
with the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Austria.
Since 2006 Kevin is a featured artist of the Victory Media Network in Dallas, TX - largest outdoor
media art gallery in the world.
Kevin Quennesson now lives in California and is a software development engineer at Apple Inc.
For Immediate Release : October 2008
Contact: Zygmunt Dyrkacz 773.278.1500
info@chopintheatre.com
Performance: I- Fest 2008, Best of European Solo Acts
Description: Fourth edition of I-Fest presents Mr. Oleg Liptsin taking on Dostoevsky’s "A Propos of the Wet Snow " and Mr. William El-Gardi taking on the Shakespeare inspired Yasser by Abdelkader Benali.
I-Fest performances (15 from 10 countries in past 3 years –- Austria, England, Finland, France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Switzerland and Ukraine) give a stage to nonconforming citizens. They choose their language, material and art form closest to their own I. They represent the growing population of individuals influenced by 21st Century new realities -- global culture, international migration, mixed marriages, and even world cuisine and attire. They dispel the myths of collective identities, often used for political and social simplification and manipulation. Reality is much richer than what’s in a name.
O. Liptsin is a Russian Ukrainian and a Catholic Jew whose artistic partner is a Taiwanese woman. Sudanese Egyptian born Muslim W. El-Gardi immigrated to Switzerland and is now a citizen of the United Kingdom. The author of his play, Yasser, was born in Morrocco and now, similar to the director Teunkie van der Sluijs, is a citizen of the Netherlands. This very well received play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival was produced by the British Theatre Tours International.
So it is fitting that I-Fest is produced also by a couple of Polish/African American misfits. It also illustrates that international theater, in whatever simple and inexpensive way, can still be shown in our City.
I-Fest will also featuring the following panel discussions
The State of Race
Shakespeare meets the Middle East
Pan European collaboration in theater practices
Staging the one-man show for Edinburgh Festival
Location: Chopin Theatre - 1543 West Division
Dates/Times: 10/28, 31 - 7p/830p 11/1, 6, 7, 8 – 7p/830p 11/2, 9 – 3p/430p
The U.S. premiere of Yasser (60 min) will be followed by intermission and A propos… (90 min.)
Tickets: $15/ea. or 2 for $20. Tix: 773-278-1500
Supporters: British Council, Consul General of the Netherlands, Wicker Park/Bucktown SSA#33
More info: http://www.studiodubbelagent.com/yasser.html
http://www.internationaltheaterensemble.com/A_PROPOS_OF_THE_WET_SNOW.html
www.i-fest.com
The Presentations
Yasser is an uncompromising, yet playful monologue by award-winning writer Abdelkader Benali. Yasser Mansour is a young, idealistic and fervent Palestinian actor, living and working in Europe. As he prepares in his dressing room to go on stage to play Shylock, the archetypal Jew in The Merchant of Venice, he finds himself torn between his Palestinian identity and the role he is about to play. He would really rather play Arafat. And Yitzhak Rabin, as he used to do as a young boy in Palestine. What's more, he has just been robbed of all his props necessary to perform his role, and dumped by his fellow actress and girlfriend Lucy, tired of his political soliloquies. It's an hour before curtain up, the pressure mounts, but where is his nose? As he maneuvers through conflicts, roles and identities, Yasser discovers that the Arab understands Shylock better than anyone else: can anyone really cut a pound of flesh without spilling blood?
Yasser was nominated for the 2008 Expression of Freedom Award by Amnesty International. Reviews and more information at http://www.studiodubbelagent.com/yasser.html.
A Propos of the Wet Snow – (Based on “Notes From Underground” by Feodor Dostoevsky).
One of the most famous literal articulations on the irrationality of the human soul has been adapted into an emotionally challenging and physically active work touching on the main problems of modern life: hatred, destruction, intellectual and physical terrorism.
These “Notes” theatrically deliver the story of the notorious Dostoevskian hero – a person from
the underground. On examples from his own life he demonstrates the paradoxical quality of the human soul – “the territory on which God and devil carry on their battle”. Starting from the philosophical question about the nature of evil in the human soul our protagonist quickly moves into the anecdote from his life. Getting drunk at the farewell party with his old school fellows he challenges one of the most popular and successful members of their group. Confronting this successful young man our hero is questioning all prosperous parts of society, everyone who corrupts with public rules and lies, who represents the corpus of “life winners”. In his drunken debauchery the man from the underground defends the individual truth and personal freedom against compliance with social rules and norms of behavior.
By challenging the relationship between the individual and society, Dostoevsky touches upon a most vulnerable issue of the day – why people choose a freedom of doing something that hurts them rather than complying with public rules and be rewarded for it?
Reviews and more information at http://www.internationaltheaterensemble.com/A_PROPOS_OF_THE_WET_SNOW.html
Production Team - Yasser
William El-Gardi (Yasser Mansour) was born in Egypt in 1978 in an Egyptian-Sudanese-Turkish
family and grew up in Egypt, the Sudan and Switzerland before settling in the United Kingdom,
where he trained at Mountview Academy in London. His most recent theatre credits include Touch
by Rikki Beadle-Blair at the Tristan Bates Theatre in London, as well as the Theatre Café
Symposium at the Unicorn Theatre in London with Company of Angles. He made his Edinburgh
debut in 2007 in The Container by Claire Bailey which won a Fringe First and the Amnesty
International Freedom of Expression award.
Other recent theatre credits include Failed States, a political Musical satire at the Pleasance Theatre,
London and Time of the Tortoise at Theatre 503 in London. UK tours of: Tangier Tattoo with
Glyndebourne Opera House, OneFourSeven with the Dende Collective/Lyric Hammersmith, and a
Welsh national tour of Flowers from Tunisia with Theatre Ibyd/Theatre Clwyd. Other theatre
includes Laters with Rikki Beadle-Blair at the Tristan Bates Theatre, Release The Beat-The Musical
with Mehmet Ergen at the Arcola Theatre and Funky Stuff at the King’s Head Theatre, all in
London.
In Film and TV, William recently completed guest roles in the BBC series Whistleblowers, The
Bill, and Channel 4's new drama Saddam's Tribe. Other recent credits include Last Flight to Kuwait
for the BBC, a lead role in the BBC/HBO film Dirty War, and Danish Dogma feature Brothers with
Suzanne Beir. Other TV includes: Spooks (series 3), and Black September-Days that Shook the
World, both for the BBC, The Sketch Show-Clithero for Channel 4 and Murder Prevention for
World productions/Five.
Teunkie van der Sluijs (director) was born in the Netherlands in 1981 and is a graduate of the
three year directing programme at Rose Bruford College in London. Recent directing work includes
productions of Robert Holman’s Kerry Leaves Home (Battersea Arts Centre, London), Boris Vian’s
The Empire Builders (Pleasance Theatre, London), Howard Barker’s Judith (Rosemary Branch
Theatre, London) and The Love of a Good Man (Rose Bruford College), devised piece The Great
Monkey Trial (Rose Bruford College) and The Expected, a modern opera by composers Thomas
Myrmel and Wilbert Bulsink, which toured Europe in 2006-2007. College productions include
Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Don Duyn’s Den Uyl and
Marguerite Duras’ India Song.
Van der Sluijs holds a BA and MA in Drama from the University of Amsterdam, and directed
several productions in the Netherlands, including Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, Stanislaw
Witkiewicz’ The Madman and the Nun and Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, as well as
co-directing a devised production based on the writings of Nikolai Gogol. His work has toured in
Europe, to North America and to North Africa, where he was awarded the Récherche Théâtrale
Award 2003 by the Arab theatre critic’s jury at the Festival International de Monastir, Tunisia
(“This masters the vocabulary of theatrical depiction; it presents us a distinguished piece of artistic
work” - Le Temps). He has taught drama at the University of Amsterdam and City University
London, and is currently working as coordinator of the international new writing programme at
Rose Bruford College. He has taught theatre workshops in the Netherlands, the UK, Canada and
Tunisia.
Van der Sluijs aims to (re)discover and re-imagine the great texts of European writers, both classic
and contemporary. He has a keen interest in the dark comedic undertones of conflict - both personal
and political.
Esteban Nuñez (lighting designer and technician) was born in 1975 in the Basque Country, an
autonomous region in Northern Spain. He studied physical and technical theatre in France and
Ireland and worked in puppet theatre, clowning and visual theatre all over Europe. He subsequently
completed a BA in lighting design at Rose Bruford College London, and set up Fishylight
Productions, a UK-based company in lighting design and visual imagery for performance.
Abdelkader Benali (author) was born in Morocco in 1975 and has lived in the Netherlands since
1979. He is one of the best-known contemporary writers in the Netherlands. For his debut novel
Wedding by the Sea he won the prestigious Geertjan Lubberhuizenprijs, and the Prix de Meilleur
Premier Roman Étranger in France (“Vivid, mythic and heartfelt” – Financial Times; “Full of verve
and hilarity” – Le Soir). He was awarded the 2003 Libris Literature Award in the Netherlands.
Critically acclaimed because of his lucid and insightful treatment of migrants’ issues, Benali has
been widely translated, and some of this work has been published in English. He reported from
Beirut under siege in the 2006 Lebanese war. With Yasser, Benali won the H.G. van der Vies
Award for best new play in the Netherlands in 2002; in the same year, the play was selected
for the Nederlands-Vlaams Theaterfestival, the showcase festival of the 10 best dramatic works of
the Low Countries.
Andy Sinclair-Harris (designer) was born in the United Kingdom in 1982 and trained at Rose
Bruford College. He holds a degree in theatre design and an MA in Theatre Practices. He is a
celebrated designer/director and concept artist with an extremely diverse portfolio including theatre,
puppetry, events, parades and theme parks.
His credits include Zoetrope the first aerial show to be performed at Rose Bruford College which he
both designed and directed. When the Lights Go Out an interactive, visually powerful piece and The
Autumn of His Years, a production using only projection. Andy also formed the production
company Kinematic, and has already become renowned for creating visually stunning performances
without dialogue. He has also designed Howie the Rookie at Battersea Arts Centre in London, and
And the River Weeps for The Miskin Theatre. He has also assisted Bob Crowley with the design of
Disney’s Tarzan and Mary Poppins, both of which ran on Broadway.
Production Team – A Propos of the Wet Snow
Oleg Liptsin (Dostoevskian Hero/Director) - Mr. Liptsin studied theater at Russian Academy
of Theatre Arts (GITIS) in Moscow with Anatoly Vasiliev and Mikhail Butkevich. He worked as
an actor and assistant director at renowned Moscow State Theatre “School of Dramatic Arts”
(Theatre de l’Europe) under artistic direction of Anatoly Vasiliev. For 3 years Oleg performed in
a worldwide known production “Six Characters In Search Of An Author” by Pirandello.
In 1989 Oleg established one of the first independent theatre ensembles in Ukraine – Theater Club, Kiev – which became a leading experimental and avant-garde theatre-laboratory in the country.
In early 90s Oleg began his directing and teaching career in Europe and other parts of the world. In 1991, a short-term residence in Schaubuhne (West Berlin) while Luke Bondy was directing “The Winter’s Tale” by Shakespeare. In 1993, experimental theatre/installation project “Kusma” based on Andrej Platonov in frames of art festival in Upper Austria. In 1993-94, teaching at the “Konrad Wolf” Film and TV Institute in Potsdam/Babelsberg, Germany. Later, a production based on Joyce’s “Ulysses” for International Festival “Kontakt” in Poland. In 1995, teaching at the National
School of Drama in Delhi, India. From 1995 Oleg Liptsin began working in USA and later – in Canada, from 2003 - in Paris.
Awarded a National Award for Experimental Work in Theatre by the Theatre Union of Ukraine, won the “Best Director” award and 4 nominations for “Best Director” and “Best Actor” in Ukraine, participated in more than 30 international festivals.
Currently Mr. Liptsin works as director and professor of drama in different parts of the world. He established and conducted the post-graduate educational program in stage directing at National University of Theatre, Film and TV in Kiev, teaches acting at Slavic University in Moscow and at Shelton Theater School in San Francisco, manages the InternationalTheaterEnsemble – recently established experimental international theatrical network.
Oleg Liptsin’s most recent directing credits include: 'Outcry" by T.Williams, "A Propos Of The Wet Snow (notes from the underground)" by F.Dostoevsky, “The Gamblers” by N.Gogol at PODOL Theatre in Kiev, “Happy Days” by S.Beckett – ITE production in San Francisco and Berkeley, “The Living Corpse” by Leo Tolstoy at Shelton Theater in San Francisco, “Oscar” by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt in Kiev, “The Elephant Man” by B. Pomerance in San Francisco and “The Serpent-Woman” by Gozzi in Kiev. Currently Oleg works on “The Overcoat” by N.Gogol and continues his effort on developing the innovative theatrical network – ITE/InternationalTheatreEnsemble
Ai-Cheng Ho (Prostitute) – Ai-Cheng Ho was born in Tau-yuan, Taiwan. She studied acting with
Oleg Liptsin at Acting International in Paris and was trained in Jacques Lecoq’s acting method at
the International Jacques Lecoq Theatre School in Paris and International School of Performing
Arts in London.
Ai-Cheng’s other performing trainings include the Chinese opera and contemporary dance, which
she’s mastering for years. She is trained in martial arts: Tai-ji quan and others.
Since 2004 Ai-Cheng Ho is a member of ITE, she participated in such ITE projects as ‘Cherry
Orchard On Plain-Air’ based on Anton Chekhov, ‘The Snake-Woman’ by Carlo Gozzi (Commedia
dell’arte) and ‘Mozart and Salieri’ by Pushkin.
Ai-Cheng is Master of Performing Arts with major in Film study from the University Paris
I-Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Kevin Quennesson (Video Art Programming) – Kevin was born in France and studied sciences in
the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, leading French school of Engineering. He came to the USA in
2004 and studied philosophy at Stanford and computer vision and graphics at GeorgiaTech. His
interests are in the intersection of technologies and the humanities.
He showed his first work called “conscious=camera” in August 2005 at Siggraph, LA in the
Emerging Technology and Art Gallery category. The “conscious=camera” based on real-time
body-tracking is a poetic interpretation of the phenomenology of images expressed by JP Sartre in
“L'Imagimaire”.
In 2006, he presented at Siggraph in Boston his "traces" installation aimed at representing people
passage and absence. "traces" is featured in the large scale "quell code" (source code) Kunst an Bau
installation in the new headquarters of SAP in Germany. "Quell code" was made in partnership
with the Ars Electronica Futurelab in Austria.
Since 2006 Kevin is a featured artist of the Victory Media Network in Dallas, TX - largest outdoor
media art gallery in the world.
Kevin Quennesson now lives in California and is a software development engineer at Apple Inc.
Friday, October 03, 2008
Egyptian author releases English version of his new novel based in Chicago called "Chicago"
Egyptian author releases English version of his new novel based in Chicago called "Chicago"
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jane Beirn
212/207-7256
jane.beirn@harpercollins.com
CHICAGO: A NOVEL by ALAA AL ASWANY
The best-selling Arab writer both in the Middle East and abroad, Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany used a Cairo apartment building as the backdrop for his international success, The Yacoubian Building, which brilliantly captured the daily drama and comedy of life in the teeming metropolis on the Nile. For his much-anticipated second novel, CHICAGO (HarperCollins Publishers; October 7, 2008; $25.95), this acclaimed fiction writer and controversial journalist – who despite literary success still practices dentistry in Cairo – shifts the stage to America’s Windy City, where a group of Egyptian émigrés navigate the shifting tides of life in the post 9/11 United States.
The many stories that converge in CHICAGO are set in and around the histology department at the University of Illinois, where Aswany himself studied dentistry in the 1980s. The characters, Muslim and Coptic Egyptians, as well as white and black Americans, all struggle with life’s quotidian demands, confronting issues of love, sex, religion and politics that have great impacts on their lives and aspirations. As their personal choices and interactions often
spiral out of control, the threat of life-altering consequences looms over their every decision.
Shaymaa Muhammadi is a brilliant young woman who has come to America on scholarship to further her medical education. Thirty and unmarried, she is religiously conservative, and appropriately modest in dress and demeanor, which isolates her from the free-wheeling Americans. When she meets a fellow Egyptian, another serious-minded student named Tariq Haseeb, she at first resists his advances. But the sexual chemistry between them proves too great, causing Shaymaa to compromise everything she has been raised to believe. The newest student, Nagi Abd al-Samad is politically suspect to some of the established members of the department, most particularly Ra’fat Thabit, a doctor who has fully assimilated, even marrying an American. But Ra’fat’s perfect world is shattered when he discovers that his daughter is harboring a cocaine addiction.
Another Egyptian married to an American, Muhammad Salah has been in this country for thirty years. Now sixty, Dr. Salah faces a crisis, his marriage has fallen victim to sexual impotence and he wallows in nostalgia for a woman he long ago left behind in Egypt. Ahmad Danana, president of the Egyptian Student Union in America, may be exploiting his student visa in order to remain in the States as an agent for the right wing government back in Cairo. When he clashes with Nagi’s over the new student’s revolutionary beliefs, the conflict may prove more serious than a mere student agreement. Meanwhile, Nagi’s situation is made all the more precarious by the fact that he has found himself a Jewish girlfriend in America. Rounding out the intertwined cast: Karam Doss, a brilliant heart surgeon with liberal politics whose Coptic beliefs stood in the way of his medical career at home; Dr. John Graham, an aging leftist who has found love late in life; and Carol, Graham’s African American girlfriend, who struggles with racism in her frustrating search for a job.
In its twelfth Arabic print run and an immediate bestseller when published in France last year, CHICAGO speaks to both the modern Arab reader and to the non-Arab interested in the ordinary lives of the modern Egyptian. The international edition of Time says Aswany’s “writing tackles the most pressing issues facing Egyptian society today, from dictatorship and corruption to economic inequality and Islamic extremism,” yet at the same time, here is a popular writer who entertains while he informs. The U.S. publication of CHICAGO, in this new English translation by Farouk Abdel Wahab, is sure to cement Alaa Al Aswany’s reputation as one of the most talked about writers on the world literary stage.
About the Author:
Alaa Al Aswany, 50, is the bestselling author of three previous books published in Arabic, including THE YACOUBIAN BUILDING, which was published in English by Harper Perennial and went on to top bestseller lists around the world. It was made into the biggest movie ever in Egypt and premiered in the US at the Tribeca Film Festival. A journalist who writes a controversial opposition column, Al Aswany makes his living as a dentist in Cairo.
# # #
June 9, 2008
Dear Book Review Editor:
The New York Times Magazine recently profiled Alaa al Aswany, the controversial Egyptian journalist and host of one of Cairo’s most talked about literary and political salons, who is also the world’s best-selling Arab-language novelist. Aswany’s first book, The Yacoubian Building, was an international sensation, selling hundreds of thousands of copies in Egypt alone – a country with 50 percent illiteracy – and has been published in more than a dozen foreign languages. Critics and devoted readers have drawn comparisons to Egypt’s great Nobel laureate, Naguib Mahfouz. Yet while Aswany “does share the legendary author’s talents for constructing simple stories about Egyptian life that convey universal truths in defense of human dignity,” Time magazine has said, “[h]is writing tackles the most pressing issues facing Egyptian society today, from dictatorship and corruption to economic inequality and Islamic extremism.”
Already in its twelfth Arabic print run and an immediate bestseller when published in France last year, Aswany’s new novel, CHICAGO, provides a kaleidoscopic view of the lives of Egyptian expatriates in post 9/11 America. The colorful tapestry of interwoven storylines is filled with memorable characters – among them an idealistic medical student with a blonde American girlfriend; a veiled PhD candidate facing the conflict between her upbringing and the Western culture she encounters; an ambitious state security officer cum informant; a university professor nostalgic for the past – whose detail-rich everyday lives come to embody the complex collision between traditional Arab ways and modern American mores. An entertaining storyteller, Aswany has a singular talent for portraying the forces that shape these lives in a subtle, realistic manner, and CHICAGO is unusual in the way it shows us how America is seen from a Middle Eastern perspective.
Despite his global literary status, Aswany still works as a dentist in his native Cairo, an occupation that allows him to hear the stories of the kinds of ordinary Egyptians who populate his books. Indeed, it was the time he spent studying dentistry at the University of Illinois that has provided the core material for CHICAGO. Working on a broad canvas, Aswany keeps his finger firmly on the pulse of the modern Arab experience. “He is read everywhere,” says Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury, editor of Al-Mulhaq, the Arab world’s preeminent literary supplement. “The importance of Al Aswany is that he reinvented the popular Egyptian novel.”
In addition to his literary success, The Yacoubian Building was made into a highly successful film starring some of the biggest stars in Arab-language cinema.
HarperCollins is proud to be publishing this illuminating new work by one of world literature’s most impressive and important talents. I hope you agree that CHICAGO merits prominent space in your pages.
Sincerely,
CHICAGO
Alaa Al Aswany
HarperCollins Publishers
Publication Date: October 7, 2008
Hardcover/$25.95/352 Pages
TOUR SCHEDULE:
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16 NEW YORK
Barnes & Noble / Upstairs at the Square
@ 7:00 pm, 33 East 17th Street
MONDAY, OCTOBER 20 CHICAGO
Women’s Athletic Club
@ 12:00 pm, 626 North Michigan Avenue
Writers on the Record with Victoria Lautman
@ 6:00pm, Harold Washington Library, 400 South State Street
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24 WASHINGTON, D.C.
Politics & Prose
@ 7:00 pm, 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jane Beirn
212/207-7256
jane.beirn@harpercollins.com
CHICAGO: A NOVEL by ALAA AL ASWANY
The best-selling Arab writer both in the Middle East and abroad, Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany used a Cairo apartment building as the backdrop for his international success, The Yacoubian Building, which brilliantly captured the daily drama and comedy of life in the teeming metropolis on the Nile. For his much-anticipated second novel, CHICAGO (HarperCollins Publishers; October 7, 2008; $25.95), this acclaimed fiction writer and controversial journalist – who despite literary success still practices dentistry in Cairo – shifts the stage to America’s Windy City, where a group of Egyptian émigrés navigate the shifting tides of life in the post 9/11 United States.
The many stories that converge in CHICAGO are set in and around the histology department at the University of Illinois, where Aswany himself studied dentistry in the 1980s. The characters, Muslim and Coptic Egyptians, as well as white and black Americans, all struggle with life’s quotidian demands, confronting issues of love, sex, religion and politics that have great impacts on their lives and aspirations. As their personal choices and interactions often
spiral out of control, the threat of life-altering consequences looms over their every decision.
Shaymaa Muhammadi is a brilliant young woman who has come to America on scholarship to further her medical education. Thirty and unmarried, she is religiously conservative, and appropriately modest in dress and demeanor, which isolates her from the free-wheeling Americans. When she meets a fellow Egyptian, another serious-minded student named Tariq Haseeb, she at first resists his advances. But the sexual chemistry between them proves too great, causing Shaymaa to compromise everything she has been raised to believe. The newest student, Nagi Abd al-Samad is politically suspect to some of the established members of the department, most particularly Ra’fat Thabit, a doctor who has fully assimilated, even marrying an American. But Ra’fat’s perfect world is shattered when he discovers that his daughter is harboring a cocaine addiction.
Another Egyptian married to an American, Muhammad Salah has been in this country for thirty years. Now sixty, Dr. Salah faces a crisis, his marriage has fallen victim to sexual impotence and he wallows in nostalgia for a woman he long ago left behind in Egypt. Ahmad Danana, president of the Egyptian Student Union in America, may be exploiting his student visa in order to remain in the States as an agent for the right wing government back in Cairo. When he clashes with Nagi’s over the new student’s revolutionary beliefs, the conflict may prove more serious than a mere student agreement. Meanwhile, Nagi’s situation is made all the more precarious by the fact that he has found himself a Jewish girlfriend in America. Rounding out the intertwined cast: Karam Doss, a brilliant heart surgeon with liberal politics whose Coptic beliefs stood in the way of his medical career at home; Dr. John Graham, an aging leftist who has found love late in life; and Carol, Graham’s African American girlfriend, who struggles with racism in her frustrating search for a job.
In its twelfth Arabic print run and an immediate bestseller when published in France last year, CHICAGO speaks to both the modern Arab reader and to the non-Arab interested in the ordinary lives of the modern Egyptian. The international edition of Time says Aswany’s “writing tackles the most pressing issues facing Egyptian society today, from dictatorship and corruption to economic inequality and Islamic extremism,” yet at the same time, here is a popular writer who entertains while he informs. The U.S. publication of CHICAGO, in this new English translation by Farouk Abdel Wahab, is sure to cement Alaa Al Aswany’s reputation as one of the most talked about writers on the world literary stage.
About the Author:
Alaa Al Aswany, 50, is the bestselling author of three previous books published in Arabic, including THE YACOUBIAN BUILDING, which was published in English by Harper Perennial and went on to top bestseller lists around the world. It was made into the biggest movie ever in Egypt and premiered in the US at the Tribeca Film Festival. A journalist who writes a controversial opposition column, Al Aswany makes his living as a dentist in Cairo.
# # #
June 9, 2008
Dear Book Review Editor:
The New York Times Magazine recently profiled Alaa al Aswany, the controversial Egyptian journalist and host of one of Cairo’s most talked about literary and political salons, who is also the world’s best-selling Arab-language novelist. Aswany’s first book, The Yacoubian Building, was an international sensation, selling hundreds of thousands of copies in Egypt alone – a country with 50 percent illiteracy – and has been published in more than a dozen foreign languages. Critics and devoted readers have drawn comparisons to Egypt’s great Nobel laureate, Naguib Mahfouz. Yet while Aswany “does share the legendary author’s talents for constructing simple stories about Egyptian life that convey universal truths in defense of human dignity,” Time magazine has said, “[h]is writing tackles the most pressing issues facing Egyptian society today, from dictatorship and corruption to economic inequality and Islamic extremism.”
Already in its twelfth Arabic print run and an immediate bestseller when published in France last year, Aswany’s new novel, CHICAGO, provides a kaleidoscopic view of the lives of Egyptian expatriates in post 9/11 America. The colorful tapestry of interwoven storylines is filled with memorable characters – among them an idealistic medical student with a blonde American girlfriend; a veiled PhD candidate facing the conflict between her upbringing and the Western culture she encounters; an ambitious state security officer cum informant; a university professor nostalgic for the past – whose detail-rich everyday lives come to embody the complex collision between traditional Arab ways and modern American mores. An entertaining storyteller, Aswany has a singular talent for portraying the forces that shape these lives in a subtle, realistic manner, and CHICAGO is unusual in the way it shows us how America is seen from a Middle Eastern perspective.
Despite his global literary status, Aswany still works as a dentist in his native Cairo, an occupation that allows him to hear the stories of the kinds of ordinary Egyptians who populate his books. Indeed, it was the time he spent studying dentistry at the University of Illinois that has provided the core material for CHICAGO. Working on a broad canvas, Aswany keeps his finger firmly on the pulse of the modern Arab experience. “He is read everywhere,” says Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury, editor of Al-Mulhaq, the Arab world’s preeminent literary supplement. “The importance of Al Aswany is that he reinvented the popular Egyptian novel.”
In addition to his literary success, The Yacoubian Building was made into a highly successful film starring some of the biggest stars in Arab-language cinema.
HarperCollins is proud to be publishing this illuminating new work by one of world literature’s most impressive and important talents. I hope you agree that CHICAGO merits prominent space in your pages.
Sincerely,
CHICAGO
Alaa Al Aswany
HarperCollins Publishers
Publication Date: October 7, 2008
Hardcover/$25.95/352 Pages
TOUR SCHEDULE:
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16 NEW YORK
Barnes & Noble / Upstairs at the Square
@ 7:00 pm, 33 East 17th Street
MONDAY, OCTOBER 20 CHICAGO
Women’s Athletic Club
@ 12:00 pm, 626 North Michigan Avenue
Writers on the Record with Victoria Lautman
@ 6:00pm, Harold Washington Library, 400 South State Street
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24 WASHINGTON, D.C.
Politics & Prose
@ 7:00 pm, 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Judge in Halliburton contract corruption trial clashes with defense
(DATELINE Peoria, Il, Sept. 30, 2008) -- The judge in the controversial trial of Jeff Mazon, a former Halliburton procurement officer accused of intentionally inflating a contract payment in exchange for a bribe, acknowledged his rulings have caused "some tensions."
In the second day of hearings, U.S. District Court Judge Joe Billy McDade acknowledged his rulings tightened reigns on Mazon’s defense team which is led by J. Scott Arthur a suburban Chicago attorney from Orland Park.
Arthur protested, after the judge directed the jury to leave the court room during a procedural squabble, that the judge’s ruling compromised Mazon’s ability to get a fair trial.
"Your honor. I can’t represent my client because you have given the government (prosecutors) so much leeway," Arthur protested as Judge McDade ruled against Arthur’s attempts to strengthen his clients argument that the War in Iraq had strained the war contract delivery system.
McDade, who is soft spoken and rarely raises his voice, referred to the first trial in which the jury last April deadlocked on the complex charges.
"I gave the defense attorney in the last trial more leeway on issues outside of the scope of cross examination to allow him (Arthur) to address matters to put on his own case for the defense," Arthur said.
But he said he "won’t allow" Arthur to do it again in this second trial which began Monday in McDade’s court room in the Peoria Federal Building.
McDade offered a chilling warning to Arthur, saying, "Whether or not there will be a 3rd trial in this case by you is questionable." Arthur said he thought he understood what the softspoken judge said but "wasn’t sure."
After verbally reprimanding Arthur, McDade cautioned the attorney about his conduct.
The argument erupted when Arthur tried to get a government witness who worked for the U.S. Army that approved contracts to support the War in Iraq to acknowledge that everyone was in a rush to get the contracts serviced.
McDade has already ruled that Arthur cannot argue Mazon is being made a scapegoat by Halliburton KBR, his former employer, that he was "framed," that Halliburton, worked with the government to frame Mazon, or that Halliburton KBR mishandled dozens and maybe more government contracts..
What remains of Mazon’s defense, which may have swayed the deadlocked jury in the first trial held in Rock Island, is that Mazon, like many other contractors serving the Iraq war, were overworked causing many errors.
During the trial, a government witness and Mazon’s supervisor, Col. Robert Gatlin, said that he and Mazon and others worked as many as 20 hours a day, seven days a week.
Prosecutor Jeffrey B. Lang argued that Mazon inflated the contract to provide fuel to soldiers at garrisoned at a military base that was hurriedly built in Kuwait prior to the Iraq war.
Arthur argued in the last trial and will argue again that Mazon and several other Halliburton contractors had merely tripped up over the conversion of U.S. dollars to the Kuwait Dinars. One Kuwaiti Dinar is equal to 3.3 U.S. dollars. The inflated contract price was increased precisely by 3.3 in an Excel spreadsheet in which the formulas were automatically embedded. By clicking the "cells," contractors automatically changed the price.
The bid document presented to the court showed the contract was $1.67 million US Dollars but listed as $1.67 Kuwait Dinars. It was then converted to $5.52 million U.S. Dollars through the monetary conversion error.
Lang also challenged claims that the government and Bush administration were intentionally seeking to downplay the trial.
"This is not a political trial. No one from Washington (DC) called and told me to do anything. I got into this because I wanted to. I read a story about this in the Wall Street Journal and I called and asked to be assigned to this case," Lang said during a break in the trial.
Lang said as many as 60 people have been charged and convicted with contract related corruption, but he insisted that the politically connected Halliburton should not be the focus of the trial.
Critics, though, insist the Bush Administration intentionally pushed the trial to Rock Island for several reasons. Mazon is Ecuadorian American but his skin tone could lead many to mistake him for an Arab American. Since the terrorism of Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of Arab Americans have become victims of American public anger from subtle acts of discrimination and bias in court rooms, businesses and government to acts of vandalism and violence.
Rock Island’s mainly rural Bible Belt constituency might have produced an unsympathetic jury for someone who looks "foreign" and who is alleged to have engaged in corruption with contractors in the Arab World.
Lang brushed the charges aside.
The Peoria jury reflects a slightly better cosmopolitan diversity including five men and nine women, all save with one apparent Hispanic juror and another Asian.
The trial is expected to continue through the middle of October.
(Ray Hanania is providing special reports and commentary from and during the trial which is taking place in Peoria, Illinois. He can be reached at rayhanania@comcast.net.)
In the second day of hearings, U.S. District Court Judge Joe Billy McDade acknowledged his rulings tightened reigns on Mazon’s defense team which is led by J. Scott Arthur a suburban Chicago attorney from Orland Park.
Arthur protested, after the judge directed the jury to leave the court room during a procedural squabble, that the judge’s ruling compromised Mazon’s ability to get a fair trial.
"Your honor. I can’t represent my client because you have given the government (prosecutors) so much leeway," Arthur protested as Judge McDade ruled against Arthur’s attempts to strengthen his clients argument that the War in Iraq had strained the war contract delivery system.
McDade, who is soft spoken and rarely raises his voice, referred to the first trial in which the jury last April deadlocked on the complex charges.
"I gave the defense attorney in the last trial more leeway on issues outside of the scope of cross examination to allow him (Arthur) to address matters to put on his own case for the defense," Arthur said.
But he said he "won’t allow" Arthur to do it again in this second trial which began Monday in McDade’s court room in the Peoria Federal Building.
McDade offered a chilling warning to Arthur, saying, "Whether or not there will be a 3rd trial in this case by you is questionable." Arthur said he thought he understood what the softspoken judge said but "wasn’t sure."
After verbally reprimanding Arthur, McDade cautioned the attorney about his conduct.
The argument erupted when Arthur tried to get a government witness who worked for the U.S. Army that approved contracts to support the War in Iraq to acknowledge that everyone was in a rush to get the contracts serviced.
McDade has already ruled that Arthur cannot argue Mazon is being made a scapegoat by Halliburton KBR, his former employer, that he was "framed," that Halliburton, worked with the government to frame Mazon, or that Halliburton KBR mishandled dozens and maybe more government contracts..
What remains of Mazon’s defense, which may have swayed the deadlocked jury in the first trial held in Rock Island, is that Mazon, like many other contractors serving the Iraq war, were overworked causing many errors.
During the trial, a government witness and Mazon’s supervisor, Col. Robert Gatlin, said that he and Mazon and others worked as many as 20 hours a day, seven days a week.
Prosecutor Jeffrey B. Lang argued that Mazon inflated the contract to provide fuel to soldiers at garrisoned at a military base that was hurriedly built in Kuwait prior to the Iraq war.
Arthur argued in the last trial and will argue again that Mazon and several other Halliburton contractors had merely tripped up over the conversion of U.S. dollars to the Kuwait Dinars. One Kuwaiti Dinar is equal to 3.3 U.S. dollars. The inflated contract price was increased precisely by 3.3 in an Excel spreadsheet in which the formulas were automatically embedded. By clicking the "cells," contractors automatically changed the price.
The bid document presented to the court showed the contract was $1.67 million US Dollars but listed as $1.67 Kuwait Dinars. It was then converted to $5.52 million U.S. Dollars through the monetary conversion error.
Lang also challenged claims that the government and Bush administration were intentionally seeking to downplay the trial.
"This is not a political trial. No one from Washington (DC) called and told me to do anything. I got into this because I wanted to. I read a story about this in the Wall Street Journal and I called and asked to be assigned to this case," Lang said during a break in the trial.
Lang said as many as 60 people have been charged and convicted with contract related corruption, but he insisted that the politically connected Halliburton should not be the focus of the trial.
Critics, though, insist the Bush Administration intentionally pushed the trial to Rock Island for several reasons. Mazon is Ecuadorian American but his skin tone could lead many to mistake him for an Arab American. Since the terrorism of Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of Arab Americans have become victims of American public anger from subtle acts of discrimination and bias in court rooms, businesses and government to acts of vandalism and violence.
Rock Island’s mainly rural Bible Belt constituency might have produced an unsympathetic jury for someone who looks "foreign" and who is alleged to have engaged in corruption with contractors in the Arab World.
Lang brushed the charges aside.
The Peoria jury reflects a slightly better cosmopolitan diversity including five men and nine women, all save with one apparent Hispanic juror and another Asian.
The trial is expected to continue through the middle of October.
(Ray Hanania is providing special reports and commentary from and during the trial which is taking place in Peoria, Illinois. He can be reached at rayhanania@comcast.net.)
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