A celebration of the 100th birthday of Haitian playwright and novelist Marie Chauvet.

Marie Chauvet was forced to flee Haiti after publishing works critical of the race and class structures undergirding Haitian society and politics during the totalitarian regime of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier. Her most well-known work, the trilogy Love, Anger, and Madness, was first published in Paris in 1968 with the support of Simone de Beauvoir, bringing her much acclaim and putting her life in great danger. Exiled from Haiti, leaving her affluent family behind, Chauvet spent the final years of her life in New York City, where she worked as a maid and died in relative poverty in 1973. It is only in the last two decades that Chauvet’s work has been given critical attention, enjoying re-editions in French and translations in English and Spanish. Though best known as a novelist, Chauvet was also a playwright, and much of her prose fiction is written as dramatic dialogue.

Organized by Professors Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken (City College of New York, CUNY) and Kaiama L. Glover (Barnard College, Columbia University) in collaboration with Frank Hentschker (The Segal Center), the program will bring together scholars, experts, and theatre artists to introduce Chauvet’s work for the stage.

The event is co-presented and made possible by the Henri Peyre French Institute, Program Director, Francesca Sautman with additional support from IRADAC (Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean), GC CUNY.

Symposium and Reading Schedule:

OPENING REMARKS & WELCOME
Régine Isabelle Joseph (CUNY) &
Francesca Sautman (Ph.D. Program in French, The Graduate Center CUNY; Henri Peyre Institute)

Panel 1: STAGING REVOLUTION: CHAUVET’S DANCE ON THE VOLCANO
Reading of excerpt in English from La Danse sur le volcan (Dance on the Volcano) by Gina Athena Ulysse. Panel Discussion with Jeremy Glick (Hunter College, CUNY) and Stéphanie Bérard (Institut d’Etudes Théâtrales), moderated by Kaiama L. Glover.

Panel 2: CONFLICT(ED) BODIES: CHAUVET’S REVOLTING AESTHETICS
Reading of excerpts in English from Chauvet’s Colère by Gina Athena Ulysse.
Panel Discussion with Christian Flaugh (University of Buffalo, SUNY) and Régine Michelle Jean-Charles(Boston College), moderated by Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken.

OPENING REMARKS
Thomas Spear (Graduate Center/Lehman College, CUNY)

Performance of excerpts in English from La Légende des fleurs (The Legend of the Flowers, translated by Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken); Jose Pliya’s theatrical adaptation of Amour (Love, translated by Lena Taub Robles); and Les Rapaces (Birds of Prey, translated by Carolyn Shread), directed by Alice Reagan. Read by Kate Abbruzzese, Grant Chapman, Cloteal L. Horne, Alvin Keith, and Zainab Musa.

Followed by panel discussion with Gina Athena Ulysse, Alice Reagan, Judith Miller, and Frank Hentschker.

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