[NEohioPAL] Actors' Summit Hosts Internationally Acclaimed Screen Writer / Playwright -- Free Lecture & Discussions

[Neil Thackaberry]

Actors' Summit 
Hosts Internationally Acclaimed 
Screen Writer / Playwright

Actors' Summit, Hudson's Equity Professional Theater, which is producing
the world English language premiere of two short vaudeville sketches,
discovered and translated by George Malko will be hosting Mr. Malko at a
series of post performance discussions this Thursday, Friday, and
Saturday. Mr. Malko is also the translator of the other two pieces on
the evening's bill of faire. In addition to the new pieces (In the
Spring and The Dimwit) Actors' Summit will be mounting the second
professional production of two classic comedies translated by Mr. Malko
- The Bear and The Marriage Proposal. Russians in Love will have a
preview performance on January 15 with the official opening night on
January 16, 2009. The play will have twelve performances through
February 1, 2009. The play is performed Thursdays, Fridays, & Saturdays
at 8 PM and Sundays at 2 PM at the Actors' Summit Theater in downtown
Hudson. 

Mr. Malko will also be presenting a lecture on "The Mysteries of
Translation" at the Hudson Library and Historical Society on Saturday,
January 16, at 2:00 PM. The lecture is free and open to the public, and
will be followed by a reception. 

George Malko (Translator) Mr. Malko speaks, reads, and writes English,
Russian, French and Italian, and has worked as a writer in all of those
languages. He took is undergraduate degree in French at Haverford
College, followed by an advanced degree at the Sorbonne. 


"Living and studying in Paris confirmed for me that a huge part of my
Russian soul would always cling to Europe, even as I knew how lucky I
and my family had been to make it to the United States where I grew up
and was primarily educated. Also in Paris, I realized I wanted to try to
write; I didn't declare that I was going to be a writer, which to my way
of thinking is an identity. I simply realized that writing was what I
had to try. 

"I got into New York Radio & TV through a Haverford classmate and dear
friend, the late Rodney Clurman. He got me hired as a reporter/writer on
a Mr. & Mrs. radio talk show which was broadcast live five nights a week
from the Waldorf Astoria's Peacock Alley. God, it was fun, I was in show
business and I was being paid to write! Or so I told myself; what I
really did over the fourteen months I was there was research and then
pre-interview an incredible array of talk-show guests: celebrities,
politicians, athletes. In its own way, it was a kind of grad school; it
didn't teach me how to write, but it did force me to learn how to
interview and how to research source materials. 

"A few years later I had a great job at CBS News but they wouldn't let
me write. I was constantly being told "Not yet," without any sense of
when that "yet" might be. I was married, living in Rome making
documentary films for CBS, and again, it was a hell of a lot of fun. But
in a moment of what might have been almost arrogant clarity, I knew that
if I was going to find whatever it was I was looking for, I had to go
out on my own. So I quit. 

"By the 70s and 80s, I had had my first feature and TV movies produced,
a novel published, some plays produced, and I had an office on West 57th
Street. Yes, it was a lot, but that true sense of something authentic
coming out of me continued to be elusive. 
"In those years, as my work progressed, and as I struggled to finish
another novel, I did a wide variety of writing to support myself and my
family. This included writing a few films which accompanied art exhibits
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One was on the magnificent unicorn
tapestries." 

For over ten years he's been in the Department of Dramatic Writing at
NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, as well as visiting professor of
screenwriting at Cuba's International School of Film and Television. His
other produced dramatic works include: Coyote (Playwrights' Circle, Palm
Springs), Querncia (Lark Theatre Company, New York), HELMUT SEES AMERICA
(Theater 3, New York), Three By Chekhov (Nora Theatre Company,
Cambridge), Last Bangings (The New Theater, New York). He has also been
a successful screenwriter. His produced feature films include: OUT COLD,
SWEET LORRAINE, THE DOGS OF WAR, LUNA, and ALIEN THUNDER. His television
credits include: TIDAL WAVE, KAVIK, THE WOLF DOG, and RETURN TO EARTH. 

"A Tragic Man Despite Himself: The Complete Short Plays of Anton
Chekhov," in his translation, was published by Green Integer Press. He
has received a playwriting grant from the NEA and a Guggenheim
Fellowship in screenwriting, the first ever awarded. His translation of
Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard was just produced at the Nora Theatre
Company in Cambridge. 





 

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