Segal Theatre
6:30pm Evening Readings +
2:00pm Afternoon Symposium

FREE + Open to public. First come, first served.

Join us for 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.

For more information click here