Lubar Returns to Smith with One-Woman Show

Two women from the old country--a Polish Jew and an Italian Catholic--will exchange personal and traditional stories that have shaped and prevailed in their lives in "A Story's A Story," a one-woman play by character actress Deborah Lubar to be staged at Smith College on Wednesday, June 23, at 8 p.m.

The performance, which will be held in Theatre 14 at the Mendenhall Centre for the Performing Arts on campus, is part of the Smith College School for Social Work's 1999 Summer Lecture Series.

In telling their stories, Rose, from the Old World shtetl, and Luigina, a peasant who fled starvation in Italy, "unearth the light beneath the pain, and the humor (sometimes delicious, sometimes outrageous) which have helped them survive heartbreak and hardship," writes Lubar. "Both discover that, despite vast differences in character, background and tradition, they are truly--and magnificently--sisters in spirit."

Lubar, who has toured extensively performing a range of one-woman shows, is the author of a forthcoming book, "Acts of Courage: Performance, Healing and Heart." A former Smith faculty member for 12 years, Lubar leads workshops throughout the country on "Healing Through Performance and Storytelling." Her other full-length theater productions include Frederick Wiseman's "Life and Fate," about a Ukrainian Jew during the Holocaust and "Blood and Stones," in which she portrays three Palestinian and three Jewish women coping with their shared historical fate. Lubar has also served on the faculties of Oberlin College, Douglass College and the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Through her work, Lubar focuses on melding together the realms of performance and healing. She received a master of fine arts degree in theater from Rutgers University and is a graduate of the Barbara Brennan School of Healing, the Resonant Kinesiology Training Program.

"A Story's A Story," which is co-sponsored by the Smith Alumnae Summer Session, is the fourth installment of the School for Social Work's 12-part lecture series. All series events are free and open to the public. The Smith College School for Social Work, which was founded in 1918, enrolls 450 students each year in master's and doctoral programs.

June 18, 1999