Drama. In conjunction with UNESCO's designation of 2007 as the "Year of Rumi," the Asylum Arts imprint of Leaping Dog Press has released Joe Martin's (Yousef Daoud's) stage adaptation of Rumi's Mathnavi. For ten years, Rumi has been the best selling poet in America. But until now, most English speakers have found it almost impossible to get a sense of the world of his greatest work, the Mathnavi. This Asylum Arts edition of Joe Martin's dramatic adaptation aims to provide that opportunity. This edition will give a wide audience an authentic taste of Rumi's six-volume work, in a reader's edition, accompanied by photographs from the 2005 production of the play.
Playwright, novelist and theatre director, Joe Martin's works comprise an international, curious, formal exploration into the border regions between the spiritual cosmos and the political world. He has lived or sojourned in Norway, Sweden, Canada, Mexico, India, Turkey, Tunisia, Nepal and France and received several grants and awards as a writer and director -- including a Fulbright Senior Fellowship in Theatre, and grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Scandinavian Foundation, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. In 2002 Martin was selected as a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Theatre.
Martin's original works and translations have been published and produced around the US, Canada, England and Mexico. His recent books include Foreigners, Conspiracies: Six Plays, Strindberg, Seven Plays, Keeper of the Protocols: The Works of Jens Bjorneboe, Parabola (Asylum Arts) and The Insomnia Suite: Poems. Author and adaptor of some thirty plays, including THE DUST CONSPIRACY, THE RECEIVER, ANATOLE'S LOVER, The Match Girl's SNOW QUEEN, and Rumi's MATHNAVI, for fifteen years he has directed Washington's laboratory theatre, Open Theatre/DC. Also active as a translator of drama from Swedish, Norwegian and Spanish, he has translated many works of August Strindberg. as well as Jens Bjorneboe, and Juan Tovar.
A director and dramaturg of over fifty stage productions in the US, Canada and Europe, his choices have included both originals and classic works such asd Jose Rivera's MARISOL (Bucharest, 2002) and Strindberg's A Dream Play (Washington, DC, 2003). He is a Lecturer in the Theatre Program at Johns Hopkins University, and in Creative Writing at George Washington University.
