Segal Center World Voices Festival: KATHRINE NEDREJORD (Norway) + CHRISTOS PANAGIOTAKIS (Greece)

The Segal Center presents our annual World Voices Festival: a three-day festival showcasing the work of renowned, international theatre artists. World Voices will feature four readings of new plays in translation, staged in collaboration with NY-based directors and performers. This year's playwrights hail from Norway, Ireland/the UK, Greece, and South Korea.

On May 3rd, we will present a double bill of plays by Kathrine Nedrejord (Norway) and Christos Panagiotakis (Greece). The readings will be followed by a talkback with the artists, moderated by Frank Hentschker.

3:00 pm — Almost Human by Kathrine Nedrejord (Norway), directed by Seth Bockley

5:30 pm — The Blood of the Souls the Night Reaps by Christos Panagiotakis (Greece), directed by April Sweeney

Information on both readings, below!

Almost Human

By Kathrine Nedrejord, translated by translated by Neil Howard

Directed by Seth Bockley

Featuring: Jeff Biehl, Michael Darby, Sophia Englesberg, Maude Mitchell, and Cael Sullivan

A refugee girl is welcomed into a blended, middle class family. The family’s internal frictions soon emerge — the older son is absent, and there's conflict between the younger son and stepfather, who takes a little too much interest in the girl. Though the mother tries to keep the peace, the girl's seeming salvation gradually becomes a nightmare.

Kathrine Nedrejord is a playwright and author from the indigenous Sami community in Norway. Nedrejord is especially interested in exploring hierarchies, colonialism and the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator in her works. For her first play Brent jord (*Scorched Earth) she was nominated for the Ibsen Prize in 2015. In 2018 she became the first female playwright in residence at the National Theatre in Oslo. Stagings and readings of her plays have been done in several countries like France, Luxembourg, Germany, Sweden and Finland as well as Norway. She has written and published twelve books in Norway. Her novel Forbryter og staff (*Criminal and punishment) was nominated for the prestigious Nordic Council Literary Award and was recently staged at the Det Norske Teatret. Her latest novel Sameproblemet (*The Sami Problem) has won the Brage Literary Award as well at the Oktober award, and are set to be published in six other countries. 

Seth Bockley is a director and writer specializing in literary adaptation and new work development. Directing credits include King Gilgamesh (Under The Radar, NYC; Soulpepper Theatre, Toronto), site-specific Utopian epic More Perfect Places, NYT Critics’ Picks Wilderness and Basetrack Live with En Garde Arts (Abrons Arts Center, NYC), 2666 (with Robert Falls, Goodman Theater), Lauren Yee’s Samsara and Philip Dawkins’ Failure: A Love Story (Victory Gardens, Chicago); Jason Grote’s Civilization (all you can eat) and 1001; the clown play Guerra, with Mexico City-based troupe La Piara (toured Mexico, Colombia, and the U.S.) As a writer his works include King Gilgamesh, Rip Van Winkle, 2666 (adapted from the novel by Roberto Bolaño), Laika’s Coffin, February House (with Gabriel Kahane, Public Theater), and adaptations from stories by George Saunders: Jon and CommComm. He is currently working on a new musical about chatbots of the dead. More at sethbockley.com

Jeff Biehl Broadway: PATRIOTS (Barrymore), MACHINAL (Roundabout). Off- Broadway: WAITING FOR GODOT (TFANA), THE UNBELIEVING (The Civilians), MERCHANT OF VENICE (TFANA and Lyceum Edinburgh), LIFE SUCKS (Wheelhouse - Drama Desk Nom.), CATCH AS CATCH CAN (Page 73), THE RAPE OF THE SABINE WOMEN…. (Playwrights Realm); CHARLES FRANCIS CHAN JR’S EXOTIC ORIENTAL MURDER MYSTERY (NAATCO); 10 OUT OF 12 (Soho Rep), LIVES OF THE SAINTS (Primary Stages), POOR BEHAVIOR (Primary Stages), ISAAC’S EYE (EST); FULFILLMENT (The Flea), BURNING (New Group), A LECTURE ON THE BLUES (Whitney Museum). Select Regional World Premieres: SHIPWRECK: A HISTORY PLAY ABOUT 2017 (Woolly Mammoth); ZOEY’S PERFECT WEDDING (Denver Center), CRY IT OUT (Humana), SCENES FROM COURT LIFE (Yale Rep), WELLESLEY GIRL (Humana), THE MOORS (Yale Rep).  Film: Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory’s “A Master Builder”, “Ricki and the Flash”, “Worth”, “Relay”. Television: “The Path”, “Vinyl”, “Mysteries of Laura”, “Forever”, “Southland”, all the "Law & Orders." Training: Juilliard.

Michael Darby is a Brooklyn based actor. A graduate of Marymount Manhattan College, he is known for his work with AdultFilm.NYC and Hip to Hip Theater Company. Most recently, credits include Where We’re Born, The Hotel Nepenthe, Measure for Measure, and Richard II.

Sophia Englesberg is an actor and producer based in New York City. She holds a BFA in acting from Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts and has trained at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. She was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Sophia is a founding member of the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research (est. 2023) and frequently acts and produces with the collective (acting credits include: ZOOMERS, Denmark, Ardor.) She hosts a developmental reading series for new screenplays called ‘Flight Club’ monthly in New York City. Sophia stars in the film TRANSACTIONS written and directed by Clara Nevins, which will make its festival debut this summer.  @sophengles

Maude Mitchell (Mabou Mines Senior Artistic Associate). Acclaimed for her Obie award winning  performance as Nora in Mabou Mines DollHouse, Co-adapted by Mitchell (Dramaturg) and Lee Breuer (Director). MMDH  premiered at St. Ann’s Warehouse and is the second most widely toured production of Ibsen’s work in this century. Film version produced by ARTE for European television. Her dramaturgical work includes The Laramie Project, and the Comédie Française’s production of Un tramway nommé désir, (Tennessee Williams’s A Street Car Named Desire) – the first American play accepted into the company’s repertoire in its 350-year history.  Training: Oberlin College, Sanford Meisner, Jon Shear. Fellowships: MacDowell (x3), Yaddo, Camargo, Hambidge, Sundance Theatre Lab (x3). Maude & Lee (d. 2021), artistic partners & spouses, worked closely together around the world for over two decades. In development: My pique-nique with Maude: Two fast friends, an intimate exchange from Hell’s Kitchen to Borneo.

Cael Sullivan is an actor and playwright based in Brooklyn. Cael studied Film at The Fashion Institute of Technology with an emphasis in screenwriting. Since then he’s worked mostly in independent theater and playwriting.

The Blood of the Souls the Night Reaps

By Christos Panagiotakis, translated by Irene Vrees

Directed by April Sweeney

Featuring: Kathleen Chalfant, Ben Becher, Ryan Ruhl

It's night. A young man accepts the visit of a man who takes him in his carriage. To where? He is strict and solemn, but the young man's attitude intrigues him. He is the Boatman of Acheron, the Messenger of Death of Plouton, God of the Underworld. The young man speaks to him with courage, with frankness, and the coachman opens his soul. He tells him what he has seen and heard for so many centuries, transporting souls to the other world. They get out of the city, go past hills and forests. They reach the Acheron River. The young man suggests that they change the flow of things. Can things change in human destiny? The coachman will spare him his life. And before dawn the young man will be in his room. Was it a dream?

Christos Panagiotakis was born and raised in Antiphilippi, Kavala, a village at the foot of Mount Pangaion in Greece. A graduate of the Drama School "Karolos Koun” Art Theater (1986), he worked in theater as an actor until 1997 and acted in the cinema and television series. As a writer he published the poetry collection Acrobat at the Edge of Time (2018). Later he published the first part of his trilogy, based on fifteen-syllable verse, entitled, The Blood is of Souls that the Night Reaps (2020), and the second part, entitled The Centrifugal (2023). The Executioner (2023) is the third part of the trilogy - a tribute to the homonymous fifteen-syllable verse known since the 10 th AD and popular in traditional Greek folk songs. Some of his poems have been set to music. At present he is working on his first novel.

April Sweeney (Director) is an actor and theater director. Her performance work has included collaborations with directors of distinct and diverse methods of performance making, moving between intimate immersive theater, (re)drawing and complicating “classical” heroines, plays in translation, hybrid performance works exploring the language of film and stage simultaneously, devised theater, and improvised film. She has performed in theaters and festivals in Argentina, Bolivia, Belgium, Colombia, Costa Rica, France, Hungary and in theaters across the U.S. As a director she has created intimate chamber works in NYC, cross-cultural work in Germany, an immersive play in Maine, a 4 episode transmedia performance memoir, staged readings for regional theater, large scale new works with college students, created theater with communities in Patagonia and the Bolivian selva, and curated theater engagement projects with Central New York audiences. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment of the Arts, National Endowment of the Humanities, New York State Council for the Arts, and the NYC Women's Fund for Media, Music, and Theatre award by the City of New York Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment in association with the New York Foundation of the Arts.

Kathleen Chalfant (Coachman)

BROADWAY: Angels in America (Tony and Drama Desk nom.), Racing Demon, Dance With Me. OFF-BROADWAY: A Woman of the World, Wit (Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle, Drama League, Connecticut Critics Circle, Obie Awards), For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday, A Walk in the Woods (Drama Desk nom.), Tales from Red Vienna, Miss Ovington & Dr. Dubois, Talking Heads (Obie Award), Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Nine Armenians (Drama Desk nomination), Henry V (Callaway Award). OTHER NY CREDITS: Here There Are Blueberries, The Year of Magical Thinking, Hellzapoppin’: What About the Bees?, The Vagina Monologues, Iphigenia and Other Daughters, Endgame, Sister Mary Ignatius..., The Investigation of the Murder in El Salvador. FILM: Old, Isn’t it Delicious?, R.I.P.D., The Bath, In Bed With Ulysses, Lillian, Duplicity, The People Speak, Lackawanna Blues, Perfect Stranger, Dark Water, Kinsey, Laramie Project, Random Hearts, A Price Below Rubies, Murder and Murder. SELECT TELEVISION: Series Regular on “Copenhagen”, Recurring on “The Affair,” “The Strain,” “The Americans,” “House of Cards,” “Rescue Me,” “The Book of Daniel,” “The Guardian,” “Law and Order” “One Life to Live”; “Madam Secretary,” “High Maintenance,” “Elementary,” “Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight” (HBO), “Georgia O’Keeffe” (Lifetime), “Voices from the White House” (PBS). AWARDS: 1996 OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence, 2004 Lortel Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance, 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award from the League of Professional Women. 2018 OBIE Award for Lifetime Achievement. She has received the Drama League and Sidney Kingsley Awards for her body of work and hold an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Cooper Union.

Ben Becher (Youngman): A native New Yorker, has been fortunate to collaborate with local artists such as Jose Rivera, Barbara Hammond and Jonathan Gray. Ben has worked with The Living Theater, The Tank and The Actors Studio among others. Ben has appeared Off-Broadway in Tis Pity She's A Whore (dir. Louisa Proske),  Letters To Sala (dir. Eric Nightengale) and Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class at Long Wharf Theater. On film you can see Ben in the Sundance select Before You Know It, alongside Mandy Patinkin, Judith Light and Alec Baldwin, and in the feature film American Thief, both on major streaming platforms. On Law & Order SVU Ben played opposite Mariska Hargitay and Ice-T while more recently starring in a series which premiered at Slamdance ‘25.  In the Summer/Fall of 2025 Ben will appear in Romina Paula’s The Whole of Time, which received a 2024 Drama Desk Award Nomination for Outstanding  Adaptation. Ben also co-curates activities at the historic, Torn Page, with collaborators Tony Torn, Josefina Scaro

Ryan Ruhl (Youngman): This is Ryan’s NYC debut. A (semi) recent graduate of Colgate University, Ryan studied Theater where his credits included Antigone, The Seagull, and The Juniors in which he played Creon, Constantine and Nick, respectively. Prior to his move to NYC, Ryan most recently performed as Jim Baxter in St Mark’s Theater’s The Perfect Arrangement in Washington D.C. Ryan continues to study acting with The Lyle Kessler Theater Workshop. A New Jersey native, he is thrilled to be living across the river in the Big Apple following his dreams and enriching himself and others through performance art. Thank you to my friends and family for their unwavering support!

FULL FESTIVAL LINEUP

MAY 1

5pm: Selected works by Kaite O'Reilly (Ireland/UK), directed by Katie Butler

*Followed by a panel on disability and performance.

MAY 3

3pm: Almost Human by Kathrine Nedrejord (Norway), directed by Seth Bockley

5:30pm:The Blood of the Souls the Night Reaps by Christos Panagiotakis (Greece), directed by April Sweeney

MAY 5

6:30pm: Highway 7 by Haeyoul Bae (South Korea), directed by Seonjae Kim

These readings are free and open to the public. First come, first served.

Artists:

SEGAL CENTER 2025 WORLD VOICES PLAYWRIGHTS

Haeyoul Bae is a playwright from South Korea. Works include: Highway 7; Stir-Fried Memories with Vienna Sausages; Here, Once, Gaga; Once Upon a Time, There Was an Asian Small-Clawed Otter Living in Seoul City; Temple of April; Saving the Goat; 1994, 2014, and the Space in between; Magnolia Balloon; Dogs Without Masters. Awards include: 2021 Byuksan Culture Awards, Play Award; 2022 Donga Play Awards, Best Play; 2024 New Play Contest by National Theatre Company of Korea, Excellence Award; 2025 Lee Yeong-man Theatrical Awards for Playwright.

Kathrine Nedrejord is a playwright and author from the indigenous Sami community in Norway. Nedrejord is especially interested in exploring hierarchies, colonialism and the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator in her works. For her first play Brent jord (*Scorched Earth) she was nominated for the Ibsen Prize in 2015. In 2018 she became the first female playwright in residence at the National Theatre in Oslo. Stagings and readings of her plays have been done in several countries like France, Luxembourg, Germany, Sweden and Finland as well as Norway. She has written and published twelve books in Norway. Her novel Forbryter og staff (*Criminal and punishment) was nominated for the prestigious Nordic Council Literary Award and was recently staged at the Det Norske Teatret. Her latest novel Sameproblemet (*The Sami Problem) has won the Brage Literary Award as well at the Oktober award, and are set to be published in six other countries. 

Kaite O’Reilly is a multi-award winning playwright and dramaturg, who writes for radio, screen and live performance. She is known internationally for her pioneering work in Disability culture. Prizes include the Peggy Ramsay Award, Manchester Theatre Award, Theatre-Wales Award and the Ted Hughes Award for new works in Poetry for Persians (National Theatre Wales). She is a two time finalist in the International James Tait Black Prize for Innovation in Drama (2012, 2019) and The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She was honoured in the 2017/18 International Eliot Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy for developing ‘Alternative Dramaturgies informed by a Deaf and disability Perspective’. She was associate dramaturg for National Theatre Wales and production dramaturg/narrative director for Rambert’s Peaky Blinders dance theatre, The Redemption of Thomas Shelby, currently touring. Kaite’s plays Atypical Plays for Atypical Actors and The ‘d’ Monologues are published by Oberon/Methuen/ Bloomsbury. International work includes the 2018 Unlimited Commission And Suddenly I Disappear: The Singapore/Wales ‘d’ Monologues, a collaboration between Deaf and disabled artists and Something Wonderful, inspired by lived experience of disability in China. Her plays the 9 fridas and The ‘d’ Monologues had their Korean premiere in Seoul, 2021. Her first feature film, The Almond and the Seahorse won the Special Jury’s prize at Dinard Film Festival. Featuring Rebel Wilson and Charlotte Gainsbourg, it was released in the UK in 2024. She is currently part of the writers’ lab at Royal Opera House Covent Garden and developing a television series with a disabled female protagonist.

Christos Panagiotakis was born and raised in Antiphilippi, Kavala, a village at the foot of Mount Pangaion in Greece. A graduate of the Drama School "Karolos Koun” Art Theater (1986), he worked in theater as an actor until 1997 and acted in the cinema and television series. As a writer he published the poetry collection Acrobat at the Edge of Time (2018). Later he published the first part of his trilogy, based on fifteen-syllable verse, entitled, The Blood is of Souls that the Night Reaps (2020), and the second part, entitled The Centrifugal (2023). The Executioner (2023) is the third part of the trilogy - a tribute to the homonymous fifteen-syllable verse known since the 10 th AD and popular in traditional Greek folk songs. Some of his poems have been set to music. At present he is working on his first novel.

This event is supported by the Norwegian Consulate General in New York.