James Lecesne to share love of performance and the written word at Brandeis

Public event will take place in Slosberg Recital Hall

JamesLecesnepicWHO: Award winning actor, author and activist James Lecesne will join the Brandeis University Creative Writing Program, in collaboration with the theater department, for an evening of performance and conversation.

WHAT: You could describe James Lecesne as a very “active” actor. The Oscar winner co-founded the Trevor Helpline, a 24-hour suicide-prevention hotline for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. He’s also the author of “Absolute Brightness” (2008), which according to the publisher, is a story “of a luminous force of nature: a boy who encounters evil and whose magic isn’t truly felt until he disappears.” On Jan. 30, he will share his passion for acting, writing and activism at Brandeis during an event organized by the Creative Writing Program.

“We look for artists who use writing as one of several media, whose souls stir across disciplines, and who bring a gift of enthusiasm and inspiration to our community,” Creative Writing Program head Olga Broumas said.

Lecesne, who lives in New York City, is also part of the After the Storm Foundation, which is reaching out to the victims of Hurricane Katrina through the musical “Once on this Island,” starring New Orleans natives, and with a feature-length documentary called “After the Storm,” which tells the story of the young actors in the musical.

As a playwright, Lecesne wrote “The Road Home: Stories of Children of War” and “Word of Mouth,” a one-man show that won the New York Drama Desk Award the Outer Critics Circle Award. As a screenwriter he has worked on the TV sitcom “Will and Grace” and he also wrote “Trevor,” which was awarded the Academy Award for Short Live-Action Film. His acting resume includes roles in “Boys in the Band,” “I am My Own Wife,” “Irma Vep,” and “Torchsong Trilogy.”

Broumas said they’ve been fortunate to receive funding from the Poses Foundation for more than five years to bring distinguished artists such as Lecesne to campus for brief residencies. The artists chosen, she added, create work that “spills beyond the scope of writing itself to several other arts.”

This event is free and open to the public. For more information on attending this event, contact Melanie Braverman at braver@brandeis.edu.

WHEN: Wed., Jan. 30, 8 p.m.

WHERE: Slosberg Recital Hall, Brandeis University, 415 South St., Waltham, Mass.

ABOUT THE CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM:
The Creative Writing Program is structured to allow flexible participation in its activities by a diverse body of students, whose interest or commitment may vary in nature or over time.

Participation can be as informal as attending readings and other public events, to submitting work for the literary magazines or attending a festival or a poetry slam, to meeting with a poet or writer in residence, to taking a workshop or literature course offered by our faculty, to taking as many of our courses as one might have time and energy for, to declaring a minor concentration, to applying for the creative writing major.

Return to the BrandeisNOW homepage