Mon, April 4, 2022
7:00 PM ET – 9:00 PM ET

Bohemian National Hall
321 East 73rd Street

FREE with RSVP

🇺🇦 The 2022 Spring Stage Readings: Bridging the Worlds is dedicated to the people of Ukraine fighting for their independence. Suggested donation ($10) will be used to support Ukrainian refugees. All collected funds will be donated to People in Need, a Czech non-governmental, non-profit organization with over 20 years of experience in helping people in emergencies all over the world.

Conceived as a dialogue for theater, Kicking Down the Quilt deals with the spiritual condition of the contemporary, or hyper-contemporary —a society of today. The protagonists of this story have no specific gender, race, names, or age. They are democratically elected representatives of intimacy. The play’s text talks without discrimination about our darkest affairs and most glorious battles, of which we ourselves cannot speak.

The 2022 Spring Stage Readings: Bridging the Worlds is organized by the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation and the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute New York, Untitled Theater Company #61, Consulate General of the Czech Republic in New York, GOH Productions, and Romanian Cultural Institute. The festival is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Spring Stage Readings is part of the Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival honoring the playwright and human rights activist Vaclav Havel. 

“Theater understood as a practice organizing time and space provides the words coming from the stage with context, meaning, interpretative nuance. Therefore, the plot and psychology of the characters are not present in this text, they might be taken on as topics for its staging.”—Rafal Dziemidok, playwright

RAFAL DZIEMIDOK is a playwright, dancer, actor, choreographer, theatre director, and improvisation coach. Dziemidok danced with and for numerous theater companies, including Dada von Bzdulow (Gdańsk), Gdański Teatr Tańca (Gdańsk), Compagnie Yvette Bozsik (Budapest), Teatr Powszechny (Warsaw), Public and Private/Clement Layes (Berlin), Novoflot (Berlin), Theater o.N. (Berlin), Two Fish/Theater an der Parkaue (Berlin), Julian Rosefeld (Berlin) and others. He is a cofounder and a leader of Koncentrat Artistic Group. Dziemidok choreographs in theatre, opera and film: Tragedy-Medea (Polish Dance Theatre, 2007), The Conquest of Mexico (Staatstheater Saarbrücken, 2012), Kiss of the Spider Woman (Teatr Studio, Warszawa, 2017 – as director), Julietta (Wupperthaler Bühnen GmBH, 2018), Heart of the Factory(European Solidarity Center, Gdańsk/Adam Mickiewicz Institute, 2018), and others. Dziemidok received a scholarship from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2008, 2017), the Aerowaves network selection (2011), and holds an MA in law (University of Gdańsk, 1996), LLM (Comparative Constitutional Law, CEU Budapest, 1997), and LLM (Human Rights, CEU Budapest, 1998). He creates stage and site-specific works with amateur and professional dancers, group and solo performances, constantly searching for abstract language and precision of the personal stories told on stage.

DMITRI BARCOMI is a multidisciplinary theater creator, director, designer, and musician from New York City. Dmitri’s work has been seen throughout New York at Ars Nova, BRIC, La MaMa, New Ohio, and other hubs of experimental work, as well as internationally at the Edinburgh Fringe. Recent projects include Others (Exponential Festival), an avant-garde adaptation of a silent film from Weimar Berlin; and A Waste Land (Edinburgh Fringe, Cloud City). Dmitri is Artist-in-Residence at Playmachine Theater Lab, a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, and an associate artist with Pioneers Go East Collective. BA, The New School.