Gordon in the News: last updated 01/26/2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 21, 2009
MEDIA CONTACT
Jo Kadlecek
Office of College Communications
978.867.4752
[email protected]
WENHAM, MA - When Kimberly Kurczy '08 was attending Gordon College, she knew she did not want to study geography only in books; she wanted to experience it firsthand. Through the Global Education Office, she spent the first four months of her senior year studying in Mukono, Uganda. She also travelled to Rwanda. Both encounters so affected her that Kurczy, an English and theatre arts double major, felt compelled to respond creatively.
The result is Mzungu Memoirs, a powerful one-woman show she developed, produced and performed as her final theatre arts project. Now Kurczy has refined the show, planning to tour with it at schools, centers and churches beginning Sunday, January 25, at 6 p.m. in the Black Box Theatre at Barrington Center for the Arts. Kurczy will perform Mzungu Memoirs as part of a series of events sponsored by the Global Education Office to inspire students returning from semesters abroad as well as general audiences interested in the subject matter. The show is free and open to the public.
Kurczy--who now teaches performing arts at the North Shore YMCAs and can also be seen as the lead in Antigone at Vokes Theatre in Wayland, Massachusetts--said she has always had a preoccupation with the African continent. "But since college my passion for theatre and social change collaborated, leading me into the world of politically imbued theatre," she said. "I want to participate in theatre used towards reconciliation."
Mzungu Memoirs is currently scheduled for two more Gordon events this spring, including one in Washington, D.C. Kurczy hopes to schedule more performances in the next few months.
Norm Jones, associate professor of theatre arts and Kurczy's advisor, considers Mzungu Memoirs a "deeply important theatre work. Her writing is honest, brave and powerful but not sentimental. And Kimberly's performance is deeply human, using the theatre in its best ways to engage our imagination. Her show takes us beyond the statistics and puts a human face on situations that are so hard to understand, like Rwanda."
