Shrinks and Thespians to Gather

I have to applaud my friend Dottie Jeffries, director of public affairs at the American Psychoanalytic Association, which is having its annual meeting in New York this weekend. The subject line of her email reads: "Shrinks, Playwright Christopher Shinn and Director Anne Bogart to discuss psychoanalytic ideas and theatre." One pictures a couch, a pen and a lot of walking patterns.

Here is the release. Should be interesting:

“The Real and the Imagined
in Psychoanalysis and Theatre” Symposium

Featuring playwright Christopher Shinn
and director Anne Bogart

Event
Psychoanalysts have borrowed liberally from the language of theater to describe clinical interactions, the mind, and the course of treatment. Playwrights have borrowed from psychoanalysis to explore the possibilities for capturing psychological experience in words. This symposium brings playwrights and psychoanalysts together to consider areas of overlap, and possibilities for mutual enrichment. Part of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s annual meeting.

Date/Time
Saturday, January 17, 2009, 12:00–1:30pm

Location
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, 301 Park Avenue, New York City

Who
Playwright Christopher Shinn (2008 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Dying City) and past APSAA fellow.

Noted director Anne Bogart who is directing Freshwater by Virginia Woolf, opening January 15, a joint production of the SITI Company and the Women's Project

Psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Phillip Freeman, M.D., symposium chair and a consultant to theater troupes, including the American Repertory Theatre

Psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Henry F. Smith, M.D., a past Performing Arts Fulbright Scholar in acting and playwriting

Mr. Shinn's adaptation of Hedda Gabler starring Mary-Louise Parker, a production of the Roundabout Theatre Company, is currently playing on Broadway. Encouraged to read Freud when he was a studying as an undergraduate at NYU by his professor Tony Kushner, Shinn has made used of a number of psychoanalytic ideas in his adaption. Shinn is a winner of an Obie Award in playwriting as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship and teaches playwriting at the New School for Drama.

Ms. Bogart, a professor at Columbia University, where she runs the Graduate Directing Program, is a recipient of two Obie Awards, a Bessie Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She will be directing Freshwater, Virginia Wolfe's only play, opening Off-Broadway on January 15.

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