Nelson
Algren Live: The 100th Birthday Celebration
An evening
of dramatic readings at the historic Steppenwolf Theater,
including never-before-seen works by the famed Chicago
novelist
February
19, 2009, New York and Chicago—The Seven Stories
Institute in partnership with Steppenwolf Theatre Company
is pleased to announce a one-night only celebration of
Chicago’s Nelson Algren on the centenary of his
birth. “Nelson Algren Live: The
100th
Birthday
Celebration” will feature dramatic readings of
previously unpublished Algren stories by novelists Russell
Banks, Barry Gifford and Don Delillo, actors Estelle
Parsons and Matt Dillon, Steppenwolf’s Martha Lavey,
and Algren’s last editor Dan Simon.
The performance on April 6th
will be
directed by David New, based on a script written for the
event by Barry Gifford and Dan Simon. A special slide
projection will be created by Chicago photographer and
Algren friend, Art Shay. Director Hugo Perez /M30A Films
will film the event for eventual distribution to schools
interested in teaching the works of Nelson Algren. This
performance and other Algren centennial events and outreach
have been made possible with the support of the Lannan
Foundation and the National Book Foundation.
Born in 1909 in Chicago,
Nelson Algren is best known
as the author of The Man
with the Golden Arm, which won the
first National Book Award in 1950 and was praised by Carl
Sandburg for its “strange midnight dignity.”
That book chronicled the dissolution of a card-dealing WWII
veteran named Frankie Machine. Algren’s powerful
voice rose out of the urban wilderness of postwar Chicago,
to which he returned over and over in books such as the
story collection, The Neon
Wilderness, the prose
poem Chicago:
City on the Make, and the
novels A Walk on
the Wild Side and
Never Come
Morning. Lauded by
Hemingway as “one of the two best authors in
America,” Algren, who died in 1981, remains one of
our most defiant and enduring novelists.
Seven
Stories Institute was founded in
2004 as a response to the realization that many good books
posing alternatives to current governmental policies and
attitudes circulate largely within academic circles but
never reach those most adversely affected by those
policies. SSI brings seminal books such as the works of
Howard Zinn and the Spanish-language edition of
Our Bodies,
Ourselves to communities
that do not otherwise have access to them through such
programs as author forums, collaborations with local media,
and distribution of books at deeply subsidized prices, to
stimulate discussion of important policy issues within
those communities who have the most to lose in the current
political and economic crises but have the least access to
the terms of the debate. SSI seeks ultimately to promote
literacy and the active exchange of ideas, imagination and
the written word.
Committed to
the principle of ensemble performance through the
collaboration of a company of actors, directors and
playwrights,
Steppenwolf Theatre Company's mission is
to advance the vitality and diversity of American theater
by nurturing artists, encouraging repeatable creative
relationships and contributing new works to the national
canon. The company, formed in 1976 by a collective of
actors, is dedicated to perpetuating an ethic of mutual
respect and the development of artists through on-going
group work. Steppenwolf has grown into an
internationally renowned company of 42 artists whose
talents include acting, directing, playwriting, filmmaking
and textual adaptation. For additional information,
visit
www.steppenwolf.org.
EVENT:
April
6th,
2009
7:00 pm
1650 N. Halsted St.
Chicago, IL 60614
Tickets $20.00 via Steppenwolf box office, 312-335-1650 or
www.steppenwolf.org.
Entrapment
and Other Writings, a new
collection of never-before-published works by Nelson
Algren, edited by Brooke Horvath and Dan Simon, will be
published by Seven Stories Press on April
6th.
For futher information or to buy the book, please visit
www.sevenstories.com.