:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 4.07.2005 ::

:: "Playwright brings Iraq controversy to Actors" ::

By Judith Egerton
The Courier-Journal, KY

Two years ago during the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Kia Corthron cast her penetrating eyes on the ethics of cloning humans in her play "Slide Glide the Slippery Slope."

This year Corthron returns to the Humana Festival with "Moot the Messenger," an ambitious examination of censorship and patriotism with more than a dozen characters. Commissioned by Actors Theatre, the play scrutinizes the policies behind the war in Iraq and the failings of the news media in reporting it.

Like Corthron, a political playwright with a definitive point of view, the central character of "Moot" is an idealistic woman who takes seriously the adage that journalism should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Corthron, 43, a Cumberland, Md., native with a master's degree in playwriting from Columbia University, lives in Harlem, N.Y. Her plays have been staged at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and New York's Playwrights Horizon. She talked with me recently about her new play and a trip to the Mideast that she took with a previous Humana playwright, Louisville native Naomi Wallace.

Have you been to Iraq?

I've not been to Iraq. I've been to Jerusalem. In 2002, I took this trip with Naomi Wallace. ... We visited theaters in Palestine, Gaza and the West Bank and some in Israel. ... Naomi had invited me, and I was very excited to see for myself what was on the news and not on the news.

Was that the inspiration for this play?

I think it was there that I decided I wanted my next play to deal specifically with the media. ... There was something about being there in the midst of it that made it more crucial to me. It made me think this was something that I shouldn't just allude to in a play but I should write an entire play about.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:39:00 PM [+] ::
...