'Voices From Chornobyl' at Caltech

I've already blogged about the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster, but I wanted to point out a commemorative event happening at our Loyal Readers stomping grounds at Caltech. On Wednesday, April 27th at 8:00 PM in Baxter Hall there will be a staged reading of "Voices from Chornobyl" a play inspired by Svetlana Alexievich's oral histories collected in Voices from Chernobyl, which we read a few years ago. Additional performances are scheduled at other dates and locations if you can't make it to this one. Find out more at this blog or this Facebook page.

Steve Julian interviews playwright Cindy Marie Jenkins,

What role does theatre play in the 25th anniversary of Chornobyl? 

It just felt like a natural progression to me. A journalist publishes interviews of people who historically have no voice and theatre artists expand the audience with their creative reactions, spreading these people’s stories. I didn’t really have a long-term plan when I started adapting it, but once we added an audience, I saw how powerful these people’s words were. Audience members left the theater and immediately wanted a copy of the book.

Here's are excerpts from a 2009 performance at Deaf West Theatre: