Rula will be back performing her one woman show “Not My Label: A Journey of Self-Discovery” at Flashpoint on March 14th at 7:00 PM followed by a wine reception. Get your tickets online at InstantSeats
I have always believed that life is better than fiction. Through the turbulent internal dialogue of a woman who has suffered traumatic experiences, I finally began to reconcile with myself that it’s okay to exist. Through the art of writing and drama, I have discovered that my home is theatre and my sanctuary are the words that spill from my lips in short fiction, novels, and currently this monologue: “NOT MY LABEL: A Journey of Discovery”.
This monologue was created as I was working on my novel, “In the Box”. It spewed naturally that I should perform this piece as I was working on the novel. It is based on true life experiences but is tweaked for the theatre. It is an accountability of sorts based on the stereotypes people place on themselves and one another. A need to label.
The strength of women, like Lilia Slavaova and Hanna Bondarewska has paved a path for courage for me. Though we are practically strangers, we merged effortlessly in the belief that each story I write has to be heard.
My goal is to continue to delve into the world of short stories and express through versatile characters a world that seems improbable. I want readers to enjoy the stories and imagine the pain of others, if simply for the sake of forgetting their own. Each piece I write is filled with burst of colorful passion, intertwined with cultural taboos. I hope I am able to convey this to all audiences.
I want my children to raise their heads high when they turn their heads back to the horizon, even though their mother’s acts have interfered with their notion of a stable home. I want them to be strong, powerful, women proud of their Arab American heritage and their voices be heard through the echos of time.
Dear Friends,
The Team of the Ambassador Theater wishes you all Happy Holidays and thank you to all of our Members and Supporters for all their help to make our inaugural season such a success!
As we enter this holiday season, we here at Ambassador Theater and International Cultural Center (ATICC) are celebrating the successes of the past year and looking forward to the next. ATICC is dedicated to reaching out to a larger audience in 2010 and we need your help to do so! 
2009 Season Highlights
The 2009 season was such an exciting time for ATICC. From our sold-out production of Sławomir Mrożek’s Out to Sea to the spirited presentation of Hopa Tropa! during Kids Euro Festival 2009, we have been able to put on some of the most entertaining, educational, and culturally diverse performances in the D.C. area.
This year, we collaborated with many local and international community leaders, including the Embassy of the Republic of Poland, France, the Embassy of Sweden, and Bulgaria.
Our works have been performed at the Shakespeare Theatre, Kennedy Center, the Arc Center, and Flashpoint Theatre, as well as various embassies. We have been featured on Fox News and NBC.com and have received many good reviews and great audience respond. Not ones to merely rest on our laurels, we are dedicated to expanding the variety and range of our programming next year in order to promote cultural awareness and the performing arts to even greater audiences. But we do need your help!
All of us here at ATICC highly value the trust you have placed in us to be the best new theater in Washington, DC. It is my sincere hope that you will consider making a first time gift to help us expand and enhance our programs. You may visit our website, www.aticc.org to learn about our events and programs and make your contribution on line, www.aticc.org/about/youcanhelp
I thank you in advance for your consideration and extend my best wishes to you for a joyful holiday season!
Sincerely,
Hanna Bondarewska and a Team of the Ambassador Theater
I’m very humbled to introduce to you Madame Helena Modjeska (Modrzejewska), the Polish-American Shakespearean icon of the 19th Century, in whose footsteps many actors would have loved to follow. Thanks to Professor Braun and his writing, I was inspired to further research the life of this mysterious and intriguing personality. I started to dream about all the amazing roles she performed in her life, and fantasized about her railway car tours of the United States. I even thought of building a special train to take our shows on the road, all in the name of Helena. Who was Helena Modrzejewska? How can we suppose to know when, during her life, she asked herself the same question? Mr. Braun in his work conveys this palpable uncertainty in Modrzejewska’s own words: “Who am I in reality?…Helena Modrzejewska, or Countess Modjeska…A fake, or an aristocrat? A player, or a woman?..An usurper, or a legitimate queen?…American or a Pole? I do not know.” Do we know who we are in reality? Although we are not playing our roles on stage as Helena did, we inhabit the various roles in our lives, that of the father, the mother, the friend, at work, at home,…with the same fervor. With the development of technology and information, and the increasing speed our lives gain, we take upon ourselves unfamiliar roles and tasks. The line between reality and artifice is blurred. This dichotomy is one that fully concerned Modrzejewska. We see it in the passion of her performances, both on and off the stage. The conviction with which she lived her life is an emblem of the powerful sense of mystery and enchantment the theatre holds over all of us. Most amazing to me is the innate ability of my American actors to take on the ambitious task of portraying a group of iconic Poles! Without their commitment to their roles, and their eagerness to learn more about the rich lives of Modrzejewska and her friends, the intimate portrait we present to you tonight would have been impossible. A toast to you Madame Helena and to you, her audience!
Forefathers part II-Read Through
“Dark everywhere
Gloom everywhere
What’s in the air,
What’s in the air?”
It is the eternal question that opens, closes, and weaves together Adam Mickiewicz’s Part II of Forefathers: “What’s in the air? What’s in the air?”
What is in the air in Mickiewicz’s poem is a series of spirits. To the audience, they reveal the human wisdom that in death, we cannot undo what has been done in life. Nor can we mask who we truly are forever.
To many, the story of who we are and where we came from is also incredibly significant. I come from a long Polish folk tradition of celebration, honor, and prayer for our ancestors around this time of the year, and so did Mickiewicz. In Poland, his name is lauded like Shakespeare’s is in England or Goethe’s is in Germany. But more than filling a great role as a national bard, he is also a praised national icon. Perhaps it is because of his innate ability to breathe life into literature by creating and introducing new ideas in with age-old human musings. The excellent translation by Geoffrey Wladyslaw Vaile Potocki de Montalk certainly transports Mickiewicz’s world especially well during Halloween. I can remember becoming mesmerized by his poetry as a youth in Poland. I would be so wrapped in his beautiful world of romantic poetry, so completely mystified by the variety of subjects and different forms of literature in which he wrote, that I would read the poems aloud to myself. Only when my family clapped at the end was I brought back to reality.
Sofie - Forefathers, Part II, click on photo to view photo galley
In this world of endless material bliss and continuing technological advancement, many people search for a spiritual fulfillment. Here, Mickiewicz’s poetry not only delivers a spiritual inspiration, it also encourages us to slow down, to breathe in creative energy. So please, enjoy the show! Experience the wondrous, mystical world of Poland and our communities on the eve of All Saint’s Day!
From left: Ivan Dimirtov, Alex Vernon, Sarah Olmstead Thomas, Ben Gibson, Lilia Slavova and Hanna Bondarewska
From the moment Lilia told me about her proposal for Hopa Tropa I was ecstatic and dying to be a part of it. During the audition process I had to present a monologue and a song, the standard for musical theatre performers. As a musical theatre performer I am very comfortable with dance and have training in many areas; However, the dance audition was the scariest and most challenging part of the audition process.
It was there that I met Ivan. This 6 foot Bulgarian choreographer exudes strength, power, and insanity. The dance styles he engaged us in were fun, aerobic, and unique. The Bulgarian culture’s dance and music is the antithesis of any training and methodology I have ever experienced as an American actor. The body position and weight distribution are grounded and syncopated on the soft beats, while all of my ballet training has involved being lifted and light with the body and its weight distribution. I have had to reteach my ear, my feet, my hands, and my heart to listen to these wonderful Bulgarian tempos, rhythms, and melodies that are almost invisible to the American ear and foot.
I have had the time of my life learning many new dances from different regions of Bulgaria, each with their own purpose, story, and style. Ivan is not one to teach in the typical classical training in front of a mirror breaking down each step, each foot movement, each arm position, but instead has engaged us in a positive, constructive sink or swim experience. He has thrown us right into the mix and told us to have fun and look like we are having fun and the steps will just come to us. We took dance classes with him and several folk dancers from Siberia, Spain, Bulgaria, and many other nations. These women in his class literally opened their arms to us, sometimes physically carrying us through the steps until we got it right or smiled and laughed the entire way through, attempting to grasp at least one element of the choreography.
I’ll never forget walking into our first rehearsal and feeling like I’d set foot in Bulgaria. The room was full of beautiful traditional objects, alternately simple and intricate, all of them expertly crafted and entirely alluring. From spindles to swap hooks, earthen jugs to hollow gourds, we one by one made our acquaintances in both English and Bulgarian – a language both exotic and intriguing, however initially impossible to understand.
With Lilia Slavova’s expertise and grace guiding us along, and Ivan Dimitrov’s energetic and contagious gusto, we followed Julia Tsheva’s skilled hands as she made each object, one by one, come to life. A spindle and a pair of wooden spoons became a mosquito. A copper pan and woven apron became a cow.
Julia Tasheva, with spoons, Alex Vernon, Sarah Olmstead Thomas, and Ben Gibson (far right)
Back dropped by Antionio Petrov’s vibrant set, belted in colorful costumes, and stumbling over our first Bulgarian words, we began to create. I felt so happy and charged in a way I haven’t felt in a long time. This was much more than a standard first rehearsal. It was a magical amalgamation of people, places, and ideas coming together to celebrate the folk lore and practices of an amazing culture. All with the intention of gathering games, stories, and puppets to create a show for children, whether Bulgarian or not. And truth be told, the excitement in the room among everyone – to share, to learn, and to play – made us all like children. Uninhibited and unprejudiced, we went wild over the traditional games, we took fastidious notes on new words and songs, and we spent hours playing with the folk objects, discovering endless ways to bring them to life. Like children, we were sponges – both the actors and the directors shared observations and learned similarities between the American and Bulgarian cultures that were thrilling in their freshness or fascinating in their familiarity. And through it all, everyone had a lot of fun.
From the first day I felt deeply that this is more than a standard show. It is what theatre is at its best – a moveable work of art that breathes and thrives upon those involved in its performance and those participating in its audience. It’s a fantastic exchange of positive energies and open minds. I can’t imagine a better way to learn about a culture, or to connect with the world.
Hopa Tropa writer and director Lilia Slavova with actors at a rehearsal
It all happened really over night! I was given the chance to be part of the Euro Kids Festival and most important to do it in Ambassador Theatre. I went….crazy! I was so excided about that opportunity that in a few seconds I decided everything about the show. It seems I have been waiting for that chance!
I knew what I wanted to direct, the idea was born in a few seconds, the name even faster. What is more stimulating than the chance to introduce your own culture to American audiences, and even more to American children? I have been directing shows from all over the world, but now I was given the chance to show the folklore side of my own culture.
I used to dance in a children’s folklore group, sing in a children’s chorus in my country, and I studied puppetry in the Institute of Dramatic Arts. This, plus my years of teaching kids (30!), all put together made sense to me. The idea to also have American actors doing it was uplifting! Dances, songs, games, sounds, traditions, rituals, and colorful costumes plus authentic objects that are part of our near past; all of that material inspired me to write a play with almost no words. For me the images are enough to tell a simple story!
I want the show to cheer our patrons, to take them on a journey to my beautiful country-Bulgaria. The best way to educate children is through playing, that’s how they learn the best and retain knowledge the longest. Let’s take our children on a short trip to a lovely little country where the traditions are still alive!
I am one lucky, lucky director! I have the best actors, whose enthusiasm and creativity inspire me to work even harder. I am also lucky, because the people working on this show with me are not only some of the best in this business, but they all are my dear friends as well! Come and enjoy a taste of Bulgarian culture!
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A Blog by the Cast and Crew of Ambassador Theater International Cultural Center