Three actors, one play, selected scenes: extracts from Rosary ONeills comedy Uncle Victor took center stage before an audience in the German House.
The German Consulate General New York hosted the performance on January 31, followed by a question and answer session with playwright Rosary O’Neill, who penned Uncle Victor on a Fulbright fellowship in Bonn, Germany. The play, inspired by Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, transposes the Russian classic onto turn of the century Louisiana in this comedy, taking on the downfall of Southern agriculture through the characters on Waverly Sugar Plantation.
The actors, Barret O’Brien, Erica Sullivan and Liz Wisan, are Yale School of Drama MFA graduates who have performed in several theaters in New York City. Barret OBrien has joined Rosary ONeill on several European tours, including Uncle Victor in Budapest.
The comedy Uncle Victor was chosen Best New American Drama by the Cort Theater, Hollywood, and celebrated in the Chekhov Now Festival in New York. It is one of nineteen plays ONeill has written. As recipient of seven Fulbright fellowships, she was a senior Fulbright Drama Specialist from 2001 to 2006. The plays director, Mike Donahue, was a Fulbright fellow as well; he recently returned to Germany as a fellow of the Theatertreffen International Forum. He works as a New York-based freelance director of new plays, classics, opera and musicals.
The Fulbright Program, funded by the US Department of State, enables students and professionals from the United States and abroad to study, research and teach in a foreign country. Support for academic exchange is also provided by the German national agency German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), which affords students and university professors the opportunity to live and study or research in Germany. DAAD also provides specific scholarships for art projects for artists currently studying or teaching at an American university.
For more information on these programs, visit
www.iie.org/en/Fulbright/
and
www.daad.org
For more information on the playwright, visit
www.rosaryoneill.com .
Germany.info
