A group of actors gather to tell the little known story of the first genocide of the 20th Century. It takes place largely in a rehearsal room and descends from collaborative to absurd as a group of idealistic actors attempt to recreate the extinction of the Herero tribe at the hands of their German colonizers. Along the way, they test the limits of empathy as their own stories, subjectivities, assumptions and prejudices catalyze their theatrical process. Eventually, the full force of a horrific past crashes into the good intentions of the present, and what seemed a faraway place and time comes all too close to home.
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2012, Victory Gardens Theatre, Chicago,
2014
Dramatic Publishing Company
978-1-58342-945-7
Historical
Bhopal, 1984: With the presence of the Carbide International pesticide factory, the city begins to claw its way out of endemic poverty. But what is to be made of the deformed babies born to women living near the factory? And the poison gas explosion that will leave three thousand people dead in just a few minutes—and will kill tens of thousands more in the years to come. How could this have happened?
