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2012 is the centennial year of the death of August Strindberg (1849-1912), one of the founders of modern drama. Over two days in early March, we welcome the Harvard and Greater Boston communities to a celebration of the work of this pioneering playwright and modern Renaissance man (he was also a innovative writer of prose in multiple languages; a poet; a painter; a photographer; a polemicist; and one of the late 19th century/early 20th century’s great European thinkers). All events are free and open to the public. This symposium is part of an international celebration of Strindberg’s legacy; it is also the main event in Harvard’s Scandinavian Program’s “Nordic Environments” series funded by a generous grant from the Coordinating Committee for Nordic Studies Abroad and co-sponsored by Harvard’s Provostial Funds Committee, the Swedish Institute in Stockholm, and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. ALL WELCOME!

HARVARD STRINDBERG SYMPOSIUM

March 2-3, 2012 

RSVPs requested but not required (this helps in our planning):

StrindbergHarvard@gmail.com

(Scroll all the way down for parking information & directions)

                    SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

**All symposium events are free and open to the public**

(Scroll down for FULL DESCRIPTIONS and SPEAKER BIOS)

Friday, March 2, 2012

All daytime events in the Thompson Room, 110 Barker Center

9-9:30 a.m. Coffee & pastries, Words of welcome, overview of events (Ursula Lindqvist)

9:30-9:45 a.m. Performed Reading #1: Poems

9:45 a.m Introductory lecture, “Strindberg 101,” URSULA LINDQVIST, Preceptor in Scandinavian, Harvard University. Q&A to follow.

10:35 a.m. Performed Reading #2: "Socrates" (Hellas, 1917--published posthumously)

10:40 a.m. Invited Lecture, "Strindberg's Theater of Ideas," MARTIN PUCHNER, Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature and Chair of the Committee on Dramatics, Harvard University. Q&A to follow.

11:35 a.m. Introduction of Alf Sjöberg's film classic Fröken Julie (Miss Julie, 1951), a highly acclaimed adaptation of Strindberg’s famous 1888 play. In Swedish with English subtitles. (Introduction by Ursula Lindqvist)

11:45 a.m.-1:30 p.m. LUNCH BREAK. Lunchtime film screening Fröken Julie (90 minutes) Participants welcome to bring lunch with them, or purchase food at the Barker Rotunda Café next door to the Thompson Room.

1:30 p.m. Performed Reading #3: excerpt from Dance of Death (Dödsdansen, 1900)

1:35 p.m. Invited Lecture, “Prison, Poor-house, Quarantine, and Military Defeat: Dance of Death (1900) Challenges a Narrative of Swedish Modernity," ANNA WESTERSTÅHL STENPORT, Associate Professor and Director of Scandinavian Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Q&A to follow.

2:40 p.m. Performed Reading #4: excerpt from The Stronger (Den starkare, 1889)

2:45 p.m. Invited Lecture, "Staging Strindberg in Mexico in Three Moments of the History of Mexican Theatre," VÍCTOR GROVAS, Associate Professor, Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, México. Q&A to follow.

4-5 p.m. Roundtable I, moderated by STEPHEN A. MITCHELL, Professor of Scandinavian and Folklore, Harvard University. Q&A with audience. Wine and cheese reception.

Related evening performance:

7:30-9:30 p.m. Staged reading of ULRIKA BRAND’s new translation and adaptation of Strindberg’s play Crimes & Crimes (Brott och Brott, 1899) at INVIVIA, 1684 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, a short walk from campus (next to Rafiki Bistro). Suggested donation: $12 adults, $6 seniors, free for students w/ ID. Repeats on March 1, 3, 8, 9, and 10. RSVP to ensure a seat, as space is limited: crimesandcrimesRSVP@Strindbergfestival.com.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

All daytime events (except for morning coffee/exhibit) in the Thompson Room, 110 Barker Center

9:15-10:15 a.m. Exhibit of rare Strindberg artifacts in Houghton Library during a morning coffee hour. LUCAS DENNIS, Curator of the Theatre Collection, will provide an overview of Harvard’s Strindberg holdings.

10:30 a.m. Performed Reading #5: excerpt from The Father (Fadren, 1887)

10:35 a.m. Invited Lecture, "Strindberg on the American Stage," ESZTER SZALCZER, Associate Professor and Director of History, Literature, and Criticism, SUNY Albany. Q&A to follow.

11:45 a.m. Special preview screening, New York-based filmmaker and choreographer GABRIELLE LANSNER's short film The Stronger (2012), a unique adaptation of Strindberg’s play Den Starkare from 1889. Lansner herself will be on hand to introduce the film and answer questions.

12:30-1:45 p.m. LUNCH BREAK (list of local eateries available at the symposium)

1:55-2 p.m. Performed Reading #6: excerpts from “Memorandum to Members of the Intimate Theater from the Director,” published posthumously in Open Letters to the Intimate Theater

2 p.m. KEYNOTE ADDRESS: “Strindberg’s Intimate Theater from August Falck to Lycko-Pers Resa (Lucky Peter’s Journey),” TURE RANGSTRÖM, Artistic Director of Strindberg's Intimate Theater in Stockholm

3-5 p.m. THEATER WORKSHOP with ROBERT BRUSTEIN, Founding Director of the American Repertory Theater and Institute in Cambridge and a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard; DAVID KRASNER, actor, director, and Associate Professor of Performing Arts at Emerson College, Boston; and TURE RANGSTRÖM. Scenes from The Father (1887), Miss Julie (1888), The Stronger (1889), The Dance of Death (1900), and A Dream Play (1901). All actors and spectators welcome. Come watch these directors in action as they work through some of Strindberg’s most stimulating scenes! **Note: if you are interested in auditioning for a particular role in the workshop, please get in touch with Anne Marie Bookwalter as soon as possible.

5-6 p.m. Roundtable II moderated by ULRIKA BRAND followed by Q&A with the audience; concluding wine and cheese reception.

Related evening performance (repeat of last night):

7:30-9:30 p.m. Staged reading of ULRIKA BRAND’s new translation and adaptation of Strindberg’s play Crimes & Crimes (Brott och Brott, 1899) at INVIVIA, 1684 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, a short walk from campus next to Rafiki Bistro. Suggested donation: $12 adults, $6 seniors, free for students w/ ID. Repeats on March 1, 3, 8, 9, and 10. RSVP to ensure a seat, as space is limited: crimesandcrimesRSVP@Strindbergfestival.com.

“Meeting each other and leaving each other. Leaving and meeting. That’s what life is!”

--August Strindberg, A Dream Play

“People are constantly clamoring for the joy of life. As for me, I find the joy of life in the hard and cruel battle of life - to learn something is a joy to me.”--August Strindberg

Strindberg Symposium Committee

1. * Dr. Ursula Lindqvist, Preceptor in Scandinavian; Director of Undergraduate Studies for Scandinavian, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
   

2. * Ulrika Brand, Cambridge playwright, translator, and Strindberg partisan
   

3. * Stephen Mitchell, Professor of Scandinavian and Folklore
   

4. * Dr. Lisa Parkes, Senior Preceptor in German and Director of the German Language Program, Germanic Languages and Literatures
   

5. * Anne Marie Bookwalter, A.M. in Arts in Education, Harvard University, 2011; director and co-founder, Bathwater Productions, San Francisco
   

6. *Olga Zhulina, Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature (graduate research assistant)
   

7. *Nora Garry, Class of 2014, Literature Concentrator (undergraduate research assistant)
   

8. *David Grieder, Class of 2014, Literature Concentrator (publicity coordinator)
   

Special thanks

The Committee would like to thank especially Taco Matthews of Taco Design for the wonderful design work on our posters and advertising;  Gnomon Copy for its exceptional print work; and Melissa Carden, the Germanic Languages and Literatures Department Administrator, for her conscientious accounting.

PARKING & DIRECTIONS

PARKING

All symposium events take place on the ground floor of Barker Center at 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge, or immediately nearby.  While some metered street parking (meters in effect 6 a.m.-8 p.m. Mon-Sat) is available on nearby Quincy, Prescott, Harvard, and Bow streets, please note that March 2-3 is also Junior Parents Weekend at Harvard, so street parking will likely be even more limited than usual (and most spots have a two-hour limit). Accordingly, taking mass transit to the symposium is strongly recommended. If you must drive, try to purchase a Visitor Parking Pass in advance, or carpool with other attendees and share the cost of one of the public parking garages in the vicinity of Harvard Square:

Click here to register online and purchase a Visitor Parking Pass in advance of the symposium (on that page, click on “Click here to Register.” Note that a major credit card and your license plate number are required to complete this transaction. The cost of the passes are as follows: $13 for a weekday; $5 for a weeknight; and $5 for a weekend day.

Click here for a listing of public parking garages within a short walk of Barker Center.

Click here for an interactive Harvard University parking map.

GETTING TO HARVARD . . .

Via Public Transportation

Take the Red Line to the Harvard stop; or take any number of buses that come to Harvard Square. For more information and schedules, visit the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) website. From the Harvard T station, walk down Massachusetts Avenue in the direction of The Holyoke Center/Au Bon Pain. Continue along Massachusetts Avenue and cross the street so that you are walking alongside the gates of Harvard Yard. When you get to Quincy Street, turn left, cross the street and enter the gate marked 12 Barker Center (which is 12 Quincy Street). The Thompson Room is directly opposite the main stairs.

By Car

From the Massachusetts Turnpike (Mass Pike - Rt. 90, East and Westbound):
Take Exit 18 (Allston—or Brighton/Cambridge). Go through toll booth ($1.00) and bear right towards Cambridge, then get into far left lane at set of traffic lights. At 2nd traffic light (before the bridge across from the Doubletree Guest Suite Hotel) turn left onto Storrow Drive; Soldiers Field Road; exit at Harvard Square. Turn right to cross the bridge.
You will be on JFK Street headed into Harvard Square.

From The South (I-93 North):
Heading North on Route 93, take the Mass Pike –See directions above

From The North (I-93 South):

Heading South on Route 93, exit onto Storrow Drive West. Take Harvard Square/Cambridge exit, turn right and proceed over bridge and across Memorial Drive onto JFK Street and into Harvard Square.

See parking options above.

ABSTRACTS AND SPEAKER BIOS

(In order of appearance on the program)

URSULA LINDQVIST

”Strindberg 101”

That Strindberg was a pioneering playwright and the celebrated author of such plays as The Father, Miss Julie, and The Ghost Sonata, many of us know. But he was also astonishingly prolific and had remarkable range as an artist, authoring nearly seventy plays, seven novels, three collections of poetry, thirteen works of autobiographical fiction in multiple languages, and dozens of short fictional, historical, polemical, and scientific writings. He was also a painter and a photographer, and he is known for embracing controversial positions on many of the top social issues of his day—particularly questions of gender equality, sex roles, and class struggle. This lecture will serve as an introduction to this multifaceted, modern Renaissance man who once declared, “I don’t have the sharpest mind—but my fire, my fire is the greatest in Sweden.”

Ursula Lindqvist is Preceptor in Scandinavian and Director of Undergraduate Studies for Scandinavian at Harvard University. She also coordinates the Scandinavian Languages Tutorial Program, which offers instruction in Danish, Finnish, modern Icelandic, and Norwegian to Harvard undergraduates who demonstrate an academic or curricular need. Her areas of expertise include Nordic cinema, Nordic theater and drama, modern Scandinavian poetry, and Nordic (post)-colonial studies. Her articles have appeared in Modernism/Modernity, Space and Culture, and a special issue of Scandinavian-Canadian Studies devoted to Nordic Cinema, among other venues. She is completing a book on Roy Andersson’s avantgarde film Songs from the Second Floor (2000) for University of Washington Press’s Nordic Film Classics series.

MARTIN PUCHNER

“Strindberg and the Theatre of Ideas”

Under the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche, Strindberg worked on a cycle of world-historical plays, featuring figures such as Moses, Socrates, and Jesus. Professor Puchner discusses the Socrates play, Hellas, Strindberg’s original contribution to the drama of ideas. The drama of ideas is a crucial genre for modernism and should be understood as an intersection of theater and philosophy characteristic of the period. But the Socrates play itself also has a long history, ultimately going back to Plato, who conceived of philosophy in a dramatic form. 

Martin Puchner is Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. His writing and research fall under three broad rubrics: drama; philosophy; and world literature. Puchner approaches philosophy primarily through its relation to drama and theater. This work is articulated in his recent The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2010). World Literature is the focus of Puchner’s Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes (2006), which won the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Award and honorable mention of the MSA’s best book award. In addition to his scholarly work, Puchner writes essays on contemporary literature, philosophy, and politics for such venues as The London Review of Books, Bookforum, Raritan Review, and N+1.

FILM SCREENING: Fröken Julie (Miss Julie, dir. Alf Sjöberg, 1951)

Based on the Strindberg play of the same name, Alf Sjöberg directed Anita Björk and Ulf Palme in the Cannes Grand Prix-winning drama that captured a challenge to the sexual mores and class divisions of 19th century Sweden.  Fresh out of an engagement, the aristocratic Julie (Björk) spends a Midsummer night with her estate’s head steward, Jean (Palme), in a piercing exploration of power, gender, and the bitter constructs that circumscribe their lives.  Fueled by Strindberg’s naturalistic script, this powerful adaptation couples innovative visual techniques with a brazen reinterpretation to animate Fröken Julie into a scathing social indictment whose legacy reverberates within Scandinavian and European art cinema. (90 min.)

ANNA WESTERSTÅHL STENPORT

“Prison, Poor-house, Quarantine, and Military Defeat: Dance of Death (1900) Challenges a Narrative of Swedish Modernity” 

Often labeled a pivotal work in Strindberg’s oeuvre and situated as a bridge between the naturalism of the playwright’s early career and the symbolism and expressionism of his later, Dance of Death is also one of Strindberg’s most often produced plays. Although today it tends to be staged as a twisted absurdist marital drama full of damning one-liners and tragicomic potential, many previous interpretations focused on the possibility of redemption and reconciliation, in particular as part of a Christian framework implicit in the play. Anna Westerståhl Stenport’s talk offers new interpretations of the play by investigating its many overlooked references to contemporary society and culture, which showcase the complex trajectory of Sweden’s modernization at the end of nineteenth century. Her presentation addresses set, stage directions, and dialogue, analyzing implications of recurring references to poverty, imprisonment, sanitation, and diminished military power. 

Anna Westerståhl Stenport is an Associate Professor of Scandinavian Studies, Theatre, Comparative and World Literatures, Media and Cinema Studies, and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Currently a Visiting Associate Professor and Anna Lindh Fellow at the Europe Center at Stanford University, she is the author of Locating Strindberg's Prose: Modernism, Transnationalism, Setting  (Toronto University Press, 2010) as well as of a substantial scholarship on modern Scandinavian literature, drama, film, and culture. Her book Lukas Moodysson’s Show Me Love will be published in May 2012 at the University of Washington Press. She is an American-Scandinavian Foundation Fellow and the recipient of a large number of research grants and awards, as well as an Affiliate Associate Professor of Literature at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg. 

VÍCTOR GROVAS

“Staging Strindberg in Mexico in three moments of the history of Mexican theatre”

In his talk, Professor Grovas concentrates on the evolution of the reception of Strindberg in Mexico in three moments of Mexican theatre history (the 1920s, 1960s, and 1990s) and, in particular, the first staging of Strindberg in Mexico and its reception. Strindberg has been staged in Mexico since the Mexican Revolution period. Such important Mexican directors as Alejandro Jodorowski and Juan José Gurrola rendered Strindberg’s material in poetic texts of specific forms and presented in these plays the problems of Mexican society. As a secondary topic, Grovas examines the relevant and historical competition on the Mexican stage between Ibsen and Strindberg, especially in the “Teatro de Ulises” seasons, directed by icons of Mexican theatre and literature such as Villaurrutia and Novo.

Professor Grovas, a specialist in Mexican and Scandinavian Theater, has twelve years of experience teaching at UNAM, Tec de Monterrey, UVM. He was invited professor at the Universities of Osnabrück and Münster as well as UCLA and CSU and has participated as a lecturer in numerous international seminars on Ibsen in Norway, Bangladesh, and China. Currently, he teaches at the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana and is coordinator of Academic Exchange and director of Research and Postgraduate Studies. Grovas has written various articles for national and international magazines and is author of the books Literature in Latin America; The other in Us: the Foreigner in the Theater of Rodolfo Usigli; The World Upside Down and the Romantic Smile; Ibsen: the Mexican Way; Directing Vikings and Trolls; Ibsen Conquers the World; Peer Gynt Meets Other Pyramids; and Strindberg, the Infernal Alchemist of Theater. He has also written the novel The Trip of Count Olivos and the play Ibsen: Essay on Himself.

STEPHEN A. MITCHELL

Moderator, Roundtable I

Stephen A. Mitchell is Professor of Scandinavian and Folklore at Harvard University. His research and teaching covers a wide variety of genres and periods of Nordic culture and literature, centering on popular traditions, belief systems, mythology, and legends in the late medieval and early modern periods, but he has also published well outside these fields, including articles on such Strindberg plays as Easter and The Ghost Sonata. His research in recent years, including as a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies and a visitor at the University of Aarhus, has resulted in a book-length study of witchcraft and magic throughout medieval Scandinavia, Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), for which he recently was named a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow.

ESZTER SZALCZER

“Strindberg on the American Stage”

August Strindberg’s profound impact on American theatre is undeniable, as it can be detected both in the work of the greatest American dramatists and in the critics and audiences’ reactions to productions of his plays. Szalczer’s presentation focuses on the latter by tracing the trajectory of the Swedish playwright’s reception on the American stage, sampling productions of his most frequently performed plays including The Father, Miss Julie, The Dance of Death, A Dream Play, and The Ghost Sonata.

Eszter Szalczer holds a Ph.D. in Theatre History from CUNY and a Doctorate in Comparative Literature from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. She is the author of Writing Daughters: August Strindberg’s Other Voices (Norvik Press, 2008) and August Strindberg (Routledge, 2010, Routledge Modern and Contemporary Dramatists), as well as numerous articles and book chapters on Strindberg, including The Cambridge Companion to August Strindberg (2009). Eszter was also co-founder of the “August in January” festivals in NYC, which presented full productions of a series of Strindberg plays and related scholarly symposia from 1999 to 2002. Currently she is co-editor of http://strindbergfestival.com/, which disseminates information about the centennial celebrations of Strindberg’s work in the United States.

GABRIELLE LANSNER

Director and choreographer, The Stronger (2012)

Gabrielle Lansner is a New York-based filmmaker and choreographer, whose creative work has crossed interdisciplinary boundaries, moving from pure dance works to dance/theatre pieces to film and musical theatre for over thirty years. In 1997, Lansner formed gabrielle lansner & company and has created eight original full-length works that have performed to critical acclaim. She has recently shifted focus to filmmaking and is interested in capturing the psychological moments that inhabit the performer and the ways in which narrative can be expressed through that physicality. Her first short film Dad won the Award of Merit for Experimental Film from the Accolade Competition in La Jolla, CA. Her current film, The Stronger, is an adaptation of Strindberg’s 1889 play and has a special preview screening at the Harvard Strindberg Symposium. Lansner is also a member of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab and was instrumental in developing PS 122 as a rehearsal and performance space.

FILM SCREENING: The Stronger (2012)

In her short film The Stronger, Gabrielle Lansner interprets the 1889 work Den Starkare through the medium of dance. Stark choreography conveys the emotional complexity of Strindberg’s plot as it traces the lines of a love triangle. The film relies on artistic tools other than dialogue to speak volumes about the nature of interpersonal relations, exploring psychological journeys through their aesthetic manifestation in the physical realm. Vignettes intersperse with dance pieces to create a portrait painfully accurate yet gorgeously painted. (9:43 min)

TURE RANGSTRÖM

Keynote Address: “Strindberg’s Intimate Theater from August Falck to Lycko-Pers Resa (Lucky Peter’s Journey)”; and Director, Theater Workshop

One of Strindberg’s visions, which he realized in 1907 with the help of young theater manager, actor and director August Falck, was that of an intimate theater—a space where actors could be heard and understood without without having to shout or gesticulate wildly, where audiences could not comfortably distance themselves from the performance, and where plays could be short and seamless enough to be performed without an intermission. Strindberg wrote a cycle of four plays, called “chamber plays,” specifically for the original Intimate Theater on Norra Bantorget in Stockholm. The first of these, Spöksonaten—The Ghost Sonata—had its premiere there in 1908. The experimental theater closed in 1910 and did not reopen until decades later, in 2003, under the leadership of Artistic Director Ture Rangstöm. In his keynote address, Rangström takes us on a journey through the history of Strindberg’s Intimate Theater via images, sound, and film. What does it mean to work in a cultural archive where Strindberg’s presence both challenges and embraces us? What does it mean to perform in Strindberg’s spirit? Where is the boundary between live theater and “museum” theater? Do Strindberg’s thoughts on the art of theater have resonance for us today? And most important: What is the value of keeping Strindberg’s old intimate theater space alive for subsequent generations?

Ture Rangstöm is a Swedish playwright, translator, and director who has been the Theater Manager and Artistic Director for Strindberg’s Intimate Theater in Stockholm since 2002. From 1969 to 1993, he served as museum curator and dramaturge for the Drottningholm Palace Theater, and from 1977 to 1982 he was curator of The Strindberg Museum in Stockholm. He also managed the Ulriksdals Palace Theater from 1998 to 2001. He is the past president of the Strindberg Society and helped found the Strindberg Festival in Stockholm.

ROBERT BRUSTEIN

Director, Theater Workshop

2010 National Medal of Arts winner Robert Brustein is a playwright, adaptor, director, actor, teacher, and critic. He is a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard University, Distinguished Scholar in residence at Suffolk University, and a past Dean of the Yale Drama School. Mr. Brustein is the founding director of the Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Repertory Theatre, where he served for 23 years. He is the author of seventeen books on theatre and society, including Reimagining American Theatre, The Theatre of Revolt, Making Scenes, Who Needs Theatre, Dumbocracy in America, CulturalCalisthenics, The Siege of the Arts, Letters  to a Young Actor, Millennial Stages, and The Tainted Muse. His latest book, Rants and Raves, was published in August 2011. Mr. Brustein has supervised well over 200 productions, acting in eight and directing twelve, including his own adaptation of Strindberg’s The Father. He is the author of ten plays including Nobody Dies on Friday, Spring Forward, Fall Back, and his Shakespeare Trilogy: The English Channel, Mortal Terror, which opened in Boston in the fall of 2011, and The Last Will. Mr. Brustein has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was recently inducted into the Players Hall of Fame and Theatre Hall of Fame.

DAVID KRASNER

Director, Theater Workshop

David Krasner is an actor, director, author, scholar, and teacher of acting for 35 years.  His two most recent books are An Actor's Craft: The Art and Technique of Acting and A History of Modern Drama, Vol. I.  He recently performed the role of Eddie Carbone in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge (November 2011, in Wareham, MA) and has directed numerous productions, including Strindberg’s Miss Julie and, more recently, a staged reading of Strindberg’s Dance of Death.  Former director of undergraduate theatre at Yale University and head of graduate directing at Southern Illinois University, he now teaches at Emerson College. You can learn more about him at www.davidkrasner.com. 

ULRIKA BRAND

Moderator, Roundtable II

Ulrika Brand is a Cambridge-based writer, director and translator.  Her translation of Strindberg’s 1893 play Playing With Fire has been awarded a translation grant from the Swedish Arts Council and will be produced by the Negro Ensemble Company this spring in New York.  Ulrika has worked in the motion picture industry (including on the production crew of The Whales of August starring Bette Davis and Lillian Gish, and in the editing room of Roger Corman) and has also handled public relations for cultural and educational institutions such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, and Columbia University.  Her interest in Strindberg began as a teenager living in Stockholm where she attended productions of his plays directed by Ingmar Bergman.  She has a Swedish mother and an American father and grew up in the U.S. and Scandinavia.  She received her undergraduate education at Princeton and Columbia Universities.  Ulrika is a member of the Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab and former member of the Pacific Resident Theatre Co-op in Venice, California.

Ulrika’s new  translation/adaptation of Strindberg’s play CRIMES AND CRIMES has its premiere on the eve of the Strindberg Symposium, and staged readings will be performed both nights of the symposium from 7:30-9:30 p.m. at INVIVA, 1684 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, a short walk from Barker Center. The play continues its run through March 10.  This new version of the 1899 play transposes its action 100 years from fin-de-siècle Paris to Los Angeles at the end of the millennium. The central character is a screenwriter, Bernard, who, after years of struggling on the fringes of the movie business, finally sells a screenplay, changing his life “overnight.”  What follows is a suspenseful tale of “success” and its repercussions.  In Strindberg’s original version of the play, the characters were loosely based on Strindberg’s bohemian circle in Paris that included Norwegian painter Edvard Munch and his muse Dagny Juell, an artist who was the lover of many of the men in the group.  The idea of adapting the play to a contemporary setting was suggested when Ulrika directed a production of the original version in Venice, California with members of the Pacific Resident Theatre Co-operative (see playbill to the left).  Both actors and audience members were struck by how closely the experience of a playwright’s “overnight success” in late nineteenth-century Paris paralleled that of certain people who had “made it” in the movie business. For more information, please go to www.strindbergfestival.com and click on “news/events”;  to reserve a seat at the performance, email crimesandcrimesRSVP@strindbergfestival.com.

“August Strindberg,” by Edvard Munch