Belgian Theater Company To Be In Residence At UB

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Belgium's Theatre Company of the University of Liege (TULg) will visit UB next month to present a free public performance in French of the play "Kafka," an adaptation of "Communication a une academie," a witty, absurdist short story by Franz Kafka.

The performance will take place at 7 p.m. April 14 in the Katharine Cornell Theatre in the Ellicott Complex on the UB North Campus. It will be followed by an open discussion with the director and actors.

This performance by TULg, one of the world's oldest and best-known university theater companies, will be the principal event of its residency with the UB Department of Theatre and Dance from April 13-17. The residency comes a year after UB students from the department appeared in the University of Liege Theatre Festival

The TULg production has been presented in Israel, Russia and Belgium. Saul Elkin, professor and acting chair of the UB theatre department, saw the Belgian performance last year and pronounced it "a wonderful piece of theater." It will be directed by Robert Germay, founding director of the Liege Germanists' Theatre Company and a member of the board of directors of UNESCO's International Theater Institute.

The TULg residency, sponsored by UB's International Artistic and Cultural Exchange Program (IACE), calls for Germay to present lectures to students of theater, dance and French.

Since it was founded in 1994 by Maria S. Horne, UB assistant professor of theatre and dance, IACE has sponsored many UB festival appearances abroad, including the one in Liege last year, and has hosted a number of distinguished international visiting theater scholars and performers from such nations as India, Cambodia, Mexico, and Venezuela.

In addition to performances at UB, each international residency has included seminars and workshops for UB theatre-and-dance students, language students and the general public.