UW-Madison: ‘Babel: How it was Done in Odessa’ at UW

CONTACT: Laurie Silverberg, 608-265-4763, lsilverberg@wisc.edu.

‘BABEL: HOW IT WAS DONE IN ODESSA’ COMES TO CAMPUS

MADISON – Actor-artist Andrei Malaev-Babel will bring his critically acclaimed one-man show, “Babel: How it was Done in Odessa,” to UW-Madison on Sunday, March 2.

The show is a tribute to the Russian-Jewish writer Isaac Babel, generally recognized as one of the greatest prose writers of the 20th century. The fame of Isaac Babel, short story writer and playwright, is based on his stories of the Jews in Odessa and the military stories in “Red Cavalry.”

Born in 1894 and executed in 1940 for espionage under the Stalin regime, Isaac Babel was the first major Russian-Jewish writer to write in the Russian language. In 1954, his name was posthumously cleared. To date, the fate of Babel’s confiscated manuscripts, notebooks and letters remains unknown.

“Babel: How It Was Done In Odessa” was created in 2004 in celebration of the 110th anniversary of Isaac Babel’s birth. The show celebrates the vibrant, colorful life of Odessa and its citizens; it teams with characters of all ages, races and nationalities, just as the city was before the Russian Revolution.

Andrei Malaev-Babel is an associate professor of theatre and the head of acting at the Florida State University/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training in Sarasota. He is also a principle teacher of directing and acting at The New College of Florida.

“Babel: How it Was Done in Odessa” will be performed on Sunday, March 2 at 2 p.m. in the H’Doubler Performance Space at Lathrop Hall, 1055 University Ave. Admission is free and open to the public; no tickets are required.

The performance is sponsored by the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies and was made possible through a grant from the Anonymous Fund. Additional support comes from the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia, the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, and the Russian Flagship Program. Additional support comes from the Studio Creative Arts and Design Community of Sellery Hall.

For more information, visit http://jewishstudies.wisc.edu/arts/babel