Mandelstams Witness

Please join us for a staged reading of V.M. Rakoff's "Mandelstam's Witness", an adaptation of the first volume of Nadezhda Mandelstam's memoir, Hope Against Hope. It tells the harrowing tale of the arrest and imprisonment of Nadezhda's husband, Osip, for writing a poem about Joseph Stalin. Osip Mandelstam was Russia's greatest poet of the last century. After his death in a Stalin prison in 1938, Nadezhda memorized and/or hid all of his poems to ensure that they would not be blotted out by Soviet authorities. Staying one step ahead of arrest and after an endless series of hardships, she smuggled the poems to the West in the 1950s. Mandelstam's Witness reveals a woman of great intelligence, limitless courage, no illusions and a wild sense of the absurdity of life.RSVP is required. Please visit: http://www.usc.edu/webapps/events_calendar/custom/113/index.php?category=Item&item=0.861399&active_category=Upcoming

Location: School Of Cinematic Arts-building E (SCE) - ne Dock Theatre

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Daria Yudacufski