Artists Network of Refuse & Resist!

PLAYWRIGHTS:

Tariq Ali

Kia Corthron

Culture Clash

Reg e. Gaines

Trevor Griffiths

Robert O'Hara

Harold Pinter

Betty Shamieh

Naomi Wallace

DIRECTORS

ACTORS

The Playwrights

TARIQ ALI (Tigris and Euphrates) was born in Lahore (then in British India) in 1943. He was educated in Pakistan and later at Oxford. He has written over a dozen books on history, politics and biography which have been translated into many languages, as well as five novels. Three of these — Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree, The Book of Saladin and The Stone Woman — constitute the Islam Quintet. He collaborated with Derek Jarman on the film Wittgenstein and has recently produced Big Women, a four-part drama series by Fay Weldon for Channel Four Television in Britain. His theatrical interventions have usually been in collaboration with Howard Brenton: Iranian Nights (on the Rushdie Affair), Moscow Gold (an epic on Gorbachev and the fall of Communism), Ugly Rumours (a satire of New Labour), Collateral Damage (The Balkan War) and Snogging Ken (another broadside against New Labour). A rare theatrical solo by Ali was Necklaces, a plea against violence in South Africa.

"I've been very engaged in a campaign against the sanctions in Iraq, so Naomi Wallace knew she was banging on an open door when she asked if I'd contribute. Naomi said, "Don't make it too didactic, do something sensuous." So I racked my brain and decided to base the play on the interaction of two women in Iraq, just to show audiences that life in parts of the Arab world is not dissimilar from life anywhere else. Although people are struggling, at the same time they live their lives and carry on their love affairs.

The project was a good idea, because putting on a play and getting it into the culture of a country is a completely different experience from writing an article or an essay. Reading is an individual act, while packing a theater and seeing a show is a collective one, and that's very important. IMAGINE: IRAQ can travel all over the world, and I'm sure it will.

I think that people are more interested now in what's going on in that part of the world. They had no idea what US policies were leading to, no idea of the blowback effects from these policies, and September 11 has changed all that. What's been happening in Iraq is very important, because large numbers of people in the Arab world are angry about the sanctions and fed up after twelve years of bombings. Those who become completely despairing and enraged are then attracted to terrorism, because they feel nothing else can change the situation".
- Tariq Ali

KIA CORTHRON'S (Somnia) plays include Breath, Boom (London's Royal Court Theatre, Playwrights Horizons), Force Continuum (Atlantic Theater Company), Splash Hatch on the E Going Down (New York Stage and Film, Center Stage, Yale Rep, London's Donmar Warehouse), Seeking the Genesis (Goodman Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club), Digging Eleven (Hartford Stage), Life by Asphyxiation (Playwrights Horizons), Wake Up Lou Riser (Delaware Theatre Company), Come Down Burning (American Place Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre). Awards: Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, Mark Taper Forumās Fadiman Award, NEA/TCG, Kennedy Center Fund, Callaway Award. Next season Alabama Shakespeare Festival will produce The Venus de Milo Is Armed. Member of New Dramatists.

" I was frustrated, because human beings are dying in Iraq, children are suffering the most, and we've never stopped bombing, but none of this ever comes up in mainstream conversations. When Naomi Wallace offered the opportunity to start a dialogue about these issues, I jumped at the chance.

It's certainly intimidating for writers to write about places they haven't been to; it's a leap. I did a lot of research. My piece is set in a hospital in Basra. It has to do with a family- a mother, her sick three-year-old daughter, her young-son, and her teenage brother-that's suffering under the sanctions. A lot of us think of Iraqis as so different, so completely other, that I felt it might be interesting to write about what happens between mother and children from a universal point of view. I felt I could have written the same thing about an American family.

After 9/11 I felt it was more urgent not to put aside or to delay this project. For one thing, Iraq is always targeted by the State Department in that area, and is now even more at risk. Secondly, it's important for the project as a whole to point out xenophobia in this country, to see that we do not demonize Arab people. There are cultural differences but that does not make us different as human beings; we all struggle with the same issues. And if the Arab people are struggling harder, we need to see the US government responsibility in that".
- Kia Corthron

CULTURE CLASH (I'm In Heaven & Anthems) Since 1984, the satirical performance trio Culture Clash has been committed to political theater. New works include Anthems: Culture Clash in the District, for Arena Stage in DC, and Chavez Ravine for the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and "Culture Clash in America" for the Berkeley Rep. Nuyorican Stories, Bordertown and the award-winning Radio Mambo directed by Roger Guenever Smith are works that have been performed for the national stage. Urgent times require urgent art! CC is honored to be a part of this collective of artists and activists. La lucha continua, the struggle continues! Gracias a Refuse & Resist. Talk to us at cultureclash.com. Peace. C.C.. Bajando!

" i am the infiltrader of this group, in that i came late to the project and felt way out of my league. "in the room" with some of the most important playwrights of our time at this most extraordinary moment of our time. then i remembered that my mother is half syrian, and that there are sarphardec jewish roots in my fathers new mexican history, and it was this ethnic and spiritual cocktail that places me here at this moment.

the generosity of this group of playwrights and activists emboldened me, hopefully we will embolden other artists and activists to speak out at a time when the tide of patriotism washes over the country people are very quiet right now - perhaps it's also an L.A. connection, the west coast is in the house. in southern california we are somewhat blasˇ and speak out when and where we want, have rage against the machine concerts in front of police command centers, feel real good about it and go home to silverlake and email everybody every detail of how brilliant we were, performing for that ocular tube.

when i arrived in NYC i was aghast at the number of dead or alive posters on the streets and taped on to the back of delivery trucks, and the five to ten americcan flags per car.

it's a strange and dangerous time, i feel strange, i don't so much fear another terrorist attack as i fear some of the looks i get at airport bars and gift shops. I'm an americcan i have to tell myself sometimes, i am an artist. i tried to submit two pieces that reflect that inner conflict, that feeling that i am an infiltrader, a chronicler, standing in the midst of waiving flags".
- richard montoya/culture clash

REG E. GAINES (Bananas) is a writer, director & musician from Jersey City. He is one of the original poets to come out of the scene at the Nuyorican Poets Café. He wrote the book for Bring in the 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk, which was produced at the Public Theater and went on to Broadway. Recent projects: Brick City Blues - a piece created with 13 African-American and Latin women in Newark, NJ. Senior Year — Reg and Bill Lee (who together form the Hush Project) scored 13 episodes of this documentary by David Zeiger which tracks the lives of ten seniors at Fairfax High School in LA. It will air on PBS beginning in January. The Ron Cephas Jones Trio Presents Other Aspects — a musical theater piece now in development.

"The playwrights who contributed to Imagine: Iraq are very diverse; we all write about different things. These diverse voices will bring together people to hear work that they'd otherwise never have access to. Someone attracted to Harold Pinter might not know who I am, while someone who's seen "Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk" might not know Pinter, or Tony Kushner.

My play's about two homeless men. As a kid in Jersey City, I'd hustle money to buy wine for homeless men who'd get drunk and tell us stories; I learned so much from them. I was inspired to write it by listening to Vladimir and Estragon, and by reading the Pinter play that's on the program. I felt that sparse, extremely abstract language was a good way to communicate. And that's what people expect from the homeless: speed, unclear references, schizophrenia.

Audiences are more sophisticated than most people give them credit for. They can understand jump cuts, stops and starts, and the abstraction makes them pay closer attention. You can place strategic sound bites within the framework of the play. The human ear yearns for rhythm. If you construct your pieces so there's musicality going on, the ear will hear it and people will slowly start to get the content. That's something you get from Black literature, making the language elastic and plastic. The minute language starts making political points that are more left than right, it's viewed as didactic or preachy, and people don't want to hear polemics. Once you make it musical, they cannot help but listen.

Creating art that shines light on difficult issues is really important. People can die on stage, but it's fictional; there are no consequences. You're left to think about it if you so choose, if the work is powerful enough".
- Reg e. Gaines

TREVOR GRIFFITHS (Camel Station) was born in Manchester and lives in Yorkshire in the north of England. He writes for theatre, film and television, and also directs. His screen work includes Reds (Warren Beatty) and Fatherland (Ken Loach). Television films include Country, The Last Place on Earth and Food for Ravens. Stage plays include Comedians, The Party, Occupations, Piano, Who Shall Be Happy ..?, Thatcher's Children and The Gulf Between Us, which he wrote in 1991 as a response to the Gulf War. His work has been shown extensively in the United States and around the world.

"The play is drawn from two things that happened in the last 10 years of my life. The first one is a joke that I heard in an Arab village in the west bank, just outside East Jerusalem. I was living there, doing workshops with a group of young Palestinians who wanted to act and work in the theater in their own language. This was about 1995, so the first intifada had ended, peace negotiations were going on, and things were marginally easier than they had been. A young guy coming from Gaza to Amman looking for a job had nowhere to stay, so we put him up for the night and stayed up talking and telling jokes. At about two in the morning he began this joke about a camel garage, and it lasted for about 20 minutes and I nearly died from laughing-and this was in translation! So it made a very deep mark, and so did the guy. His name was Atef. I never saw him again, but I certainly owe him for giving me a joyful time in extremely bleak circumstances.

The other is a documentary I saw about a year ago about the policing of the northern no-fly zone in Iraq by British and American warplanes. It was made by a remarkable Australian documentarist called John Pilger, who was actually traveling in a truck and talking to northern Iraqi pastoralists. It had a lot of images of dead sheep and dead shepherds, including boys and girls and old folks, completely unarmed, who had simply been strafed. It was very difficult to reconcile this with any view of the West as rational and decent. So when Naomi said, "We're going to do an Imagine: Iraq evening of theater, probably in New York. Would you like to contribute?" I said, "By God, yes." That anyone in New York is interested in the situation in Iraq is wondrous in itself.

Plays are always public events, even screenplays. They're necessarily open-ended, and they invite discourse and argument. You have to watch a play with a bunch of other "yous" who might give you a different reading than the one you've come to. I also like working in television, which is a truly popular medium. My answer to anyone who says "Why not produce this for TV?" is, "Show me the where, and I know the how." I know now that those doors have been firmly closed by the interests of broadcasting groups, which are totally imbricated with the interests of the nation states and the cold warriors".
- Trevor Griffiths

ROBERT O'HARA (Dirt) received his Directing MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts in 1996, where he wrote and directed Insurrection: Holding History as his Graduate Thesis. The play premiered at the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater in November 1996. He was a 1995-96 Artist in Residence at Public Theater during which time he served as Assistant to the Director George C. Wolfe for Bring in the 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk and Blade to the Heat. He was a 1995 Van Lier Fellow at New Dramatists, recipient of the Mark Taper Forum's Sherwood Award, the John Golden Award, and Newsday's 1996 Oppenheimer Award for Best New American Play, and awarded 1996 NEA/TCG Theatre Residency Program for Playwrights with at American Conservatory Theater. Other recent works: Brave Brood, a play written and directed in NYC in 1999. Live, Biopic of Richard Pryor for Martin Scorsese/Universal Pictures. Oscar Micheaux, Biopic for HBO/NYC with Spike Lee producing. Boorda, Biopic for New Line Cinema. 14: An American Maul, a new play. Beowulf: the Funksical, writer/director for this musical adaptation of the ancient tale of Grendel and Beowulf. Writer/director at ACT Spring 2000 and Workshop 2001 NYSF.

"My play is not specifically about Iraq, but about America's relationship to the planet and the other people on it. It deals with the language you use when you're in conflict, and Iraq is a part of it. I think that neither our president nor our country has acknowledged the power of the words that you use to present things to another country, especially to hostile communities who don't find you particularly friendly. A lot of words are used that I think should not be, words like "evil," "we will hunt him down," and "dead or alive." The president needs to be aggressive, but the history of our country shows that we have a problem with placing ourselves above others. We live inside this myth that America is the best place to live, that we are the most powerful and most god-loving humans on the planet. It doesn't put us in a good light.

I'd like Americans to think about themselves and their country differently. Is there anything in our history that we could examine and say, "You know what? We could handle it better this time." My generation and generations to come will have to pay for how these actions are dealt with. It's very important that young people, and people not directly involved in making history, realize that they will have to deal with the consequences. They should be watching the government and the president, and demanding that the tone of the argument change".
- Robert O'Hara

HAROLD PINTER (The New World Order and American Football) is internationally renowned as a playwright, director, actor, poet and political activist. Pinter has written twenty-nine plays including The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming, and Betrayal, twenty-one screenplays including The Servant, The Go-Between and The French Lieutenant's Woman, and directed twenty-seven theatre productions, including James Joyce's Exiles, David Mamet's Oleanna, seven plays by Simon Gray and many of his own plays. Pinter's interest in politics is a very public one. Over the years he has spoken out forcefully about the abuse of state power around the world, including, recently, NATO's bombing of Serbia. This past summer, Lincoln Center hosted a 2-week Harold Pinter Festival featuring many of his plays and films.

BETTY SHAMIEH (Tamam) is a Palestinian-American playwright and actor. She is currently a Van Lier Fellow at New Dramatists. Her solo performance work, Chocolate in Heat, premiered at the 2001 New York International Fringe Festival. Her plays have been produced at the Yale School of Drama, Exiles Theatre in Ireland, and Adams Pool Theatre. Her writing has been published in This Week ON STAGE, Mizna, and The 1993 Poetry for the People Anthology. She was awarded an Institute of Politics Artistic Grant and a Radcliffe Fellowship to Jerusalem. She holds a BA from Harvard College and recently received her MFA in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama. Betty is a professor of screenwriting at Marymount Manhattan College.

" 'Tamam' is the story of a sister of a Palestinian suicide bomber. Aspects of the narrator's story are based upon the life of a woman I met in Gaza while travelling on a Radcliffe Fellowship. I wanted to give the audience a snapshot of a world that many Americans rarely see. It was very important to me that I created a fully human character with flaws we all recognize. By emphasizing the humanity of the character with flaws we all recognize, I hope to make the audience realize that each person who is killed in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere human beings are being turned into "collateral damages" is as precious to someone as the family, friends, and neighbors that we lost on September 11 are to us.

Most people believe "we have to do something", but there is a real effort to silence anyone who doesn't agree that the "something" necessarily requires killing thousands of innocent people in Afghanistan. At a time when intellectuals and political commentators of the stature of Susan Sontag and Bill Maher are being vociferously attacked for merely suggesting a dissenting viewpoint, I know many usually courageous and bold artists who are being cowed into silence. As an Arab-American, I don't have that luxury. I think it is incredibly important that artists continue to question the actions of our government at a time when politicians and the media won't.

I consider myself a patriotic American and that's why I'm involved in "Imagine: Iraq." Patriotism to me is not about waving a piece of cloth around. It is about recognizing that we have to redefine ourselves in the wake of September 11 and that our duty as Americans is to make sure that in this time of crisis we come up with a definition we can live with".
- Betty Shamieh

NAOMI WALLACE'S (The Retreating World) plays include One Flea Spare and The Trestle at Popelick Creek, and she has received several commissions from London's Royal Shakespeare Company, including the acclaimed Slaughter City and her work-in-progress, The Inland Sea (previously titled Fugitive Cant). In America, Wallace has received critically-acclaimed productions by the Humana Festival of Actors Theater Louisville, the American Repertory Theater, LongWharf, New York Theater Workshop, and the Joseph Papp Public Theatre. In the Heart of America was published in American Theatre magazine after winning the Susan Smith Blackburn Award. Wallace has also written a book of poetry and the screenplay for the film Lawndogs. She was the recipient of a "genius" grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1999.

"Last August, along with five other playwrights, I was commissioned by the McCarter Theatre to write a short play on the subject of ghosts. At the time I was reading an article in the Guardian by John Pilger, called "Squeezed to Death." He wrote about the cost of the Iraq embargo on ordinary citizens, and how the people there were carrying this great sadness within them because they'd had to sell everything that was precious, just to survive. I began thinking about the cost of a family having to sell all its little pieces of personal history, and that brought up the specter of ghosts, of who is alive and who is dead. A nation's grief, when it's not being seen by the rest of the world, can make a people feel like ghosts.

I hoped the playwrights would feel the freedom to write for this evening in whatever way the issues touched them, and some chose to make connections with issues going on in the USA rather than write directly about Iraq. It's exciting that they came at the project from different angles, with different interests and experiences as writers. Some of us know each other, but in general we work alone, so the chance to work as a community and attend an evening that includes all of us is unusual. Of course theater is and always has been a group effort. When artists and the public come together, there's more possibility for debate and questioning and the active exchange of ideas. I see theater as a site for resistance: it's as alive and immediate as the issues the plays deal with".
- Naomi Wallace

The Directors

JEREMY B. COHEN (Tigris & Euphrates, The Retreating World) is thrilled to be remounting "The Retreating World" with Naomi after having directed its premiere at the McCarter last fall. Jeremy also directed the Midwest premiere of Naomi's One Flea Spare in the Goodman Theatre Studio, which won an After Dark award for Outstanding Production. Currently, he is directing the world premiere of Jamie Pachino's Waving Goodbye with Naked Eye Theatre Company at the Steppenwolf Studio, which won the Production Award from the Kennedy Center's Foundation for New American Plays. Other directing credits include: the world premiere of Timothy Mason's Cannibals with Naked Eye, where he serves as the Artistic Director; the East Coast premiere of Closet Land at New York Performance Works; the world premiere of Adam Rapp's Ghosts in the Cottonwoods at Victory Gardens as well as the workshop of Mr. Rapp's play Blackfrost at New York Theatre Workshop; the Midwest premiere of Shopping and Fucking, for which he also won an After Dark Award for Best Director. This winter, Jeremy will direct the Midwest premiere of Adam Rapp's Nocturne in Chicago.

MICHAEL JOHN GARCÉS (Somnia)-- Previously collaborated with Kia Corthron on Force Continuum at the Atlantic Theater. His production of Eduardo Machado's Havana is Waiting is currently running at The Cherry Lane. He has worked at INTAR, Repertorio Espanol, The O'Neill Playwrights Conference, The Directors Company, The Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami and Teatro Lo'il Maxil in Chiapas, Mexico. Upcoming: N.E. 2nd Avenue by Teo Castellanos for the Miami Light Project and Finer Noble Gases by Adam Rapp at The Actors Theatre of Louisville - Humana Festival.

SAVION GLOVER (Bananas)-- (Performer, Choreographer, Director) is the 1996 Tony Award winner for his choreography in Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk. He also won the 1996 Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Cirlce Award for choreography, two Obie Awards and two Fred Astaire Awards for his performance, as well as the 1996 Dance Magazine Choreographer of the Year Award. Additional Broadway credits include The Tap Dance Kid, Black and Blue and Jelly's Last Jam. On TV, he was a series regular on Sesame Street for five seasons. He executive produced and choreographed the ABC special Savion Glover's Nu York. He starred in the Showtime movie The Wall and choreographed the HBO movie The Rat Pack. Other film credits include: Tap and Bamboozled. In 1997, he created a dance company, NYOTs (Not Your Ordinary Tappers), with which he performed nationally and internationally, and on the 1997 ABC opening to "Monday Night Football." Mr. Glover performed for President Clinton in Savion Glover's Stomp, Slide and Swing: In Performance and the White House for PBS and in Savion Glover/Downtown: Live Communication at the Variety Arts Theater in New York City.

CONNIE GRAPPO (American Football, The New World Order) recently directed the off-Broadway premiere of Rob Ackerman's Tabletop which received a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Acting Ensemble. Other recent N.Y. productions include Bruce Graham's Belmont Avenue Social Club for the Working Theatre and Jim Luigsā Spread Eagle and Kevin Heelan's On House at the WPA. This season, she directed Arthur Kopitās new short play serial, Chad Curtiss: Lost Again for the ATL Humana Festival. Next season, she will direct the first NY revival of Little Shop of Horrors on Broadway. She is currently working on another musical with composer, Alan Menken, called Big Street, for which she wrote the book based on a Damon Runyon short story. Connie is a member of the Acting faculty at the Yale School of Drama and resides in Brooklyn.

DAMON KIELY (Dirt) is the Artistic Director of Real Time Theater. He has directed for the Ontological Theater, Adobe Theater Company, PS122, Ensemble Studio Theater, and New Dramatists. He is a winner of the 2000-02 NEA/TCG Career Directing Program, the 2000 Drama League Fall Directing Program, the 1997 Princess Grace Award and got his MFA from Columbia University in 1995.

JEREMY PIKSER (Camel Station) is a screen writer whose most recently released film was Bulworth for which he shared the LA film critics best screenplay of 1998 award with Warren Beatty, and Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. He also wrote The Lemon Sisters, and was a consultant on Reds, for which he did uncredited rewrites. His short story Revolution in Cleveland was adapted for the stage by Trevor Griffiths as Real Dreams which was has been produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company and Williamstown Summer Theatre. He also has written a comic mystery novel Junk On The Hill (Carroll & Graf).

Artistic/Production Team

JOANN SHAPIRO (co-Artistic Director) - Director, Acting Teacher in Improvisational Techniques and Brecht at Columbia College, Chicago. Studied acting with Viola Spolin. Actor with Second City and Paul Sills' Game Theater. She has directed numerous productions by Brecht including The Mother, Three Penny Opera, Mann Ist Mann, Round Heads Peaked Heads and others. She has also directed David Hare's Fanshen in Chicago and Wallace Shawn's The Fever at La Mama.

JEREMY B. COHEN (co-Artistic Director) (Director for Tigris & Euphrates, The Retreating World) is thrilled to be remounting "The Retreating World" with Naomi after having directed its premiere at the McCarter last fall. Jeremy also directed the Midwest premiere of Naomi's One Flea Spare in the Goodman Theatre Studio, which won an After Dark award for Outstanding Production. Currently, he is directing the world premiere of Jamie Pachino's Waving Goodbye with Naked Eye Theatre Company at the Steppenwolf Studio, which won the Production Award from the Kennedy Center's Foundation for New American Plays. Other directing credits include: the world premiere of Timothy Mason's Cannibals with Naked Eye, where he serves as the Artistic Director; the East Coast premiere of Closet Land at New York Performance Works; the world premiere of Adam Rapp's Ghosts in the Cottonwoods at Victory Gardens as well as the workshop of Mr. Rapp's play Blackfrost at New York Theatre Workshop; the Midwest premiere of Shopping and Fucking, for which he also won an After Dark Award for Best Director. This winter, Jeremy will direct the Midwest premiere of Adam Rapp's Nocturne in Chicago.

RANA KAZKAZ*(co-Artistic Director) (acting in Tigris & Euphrates, Somnia) Off-Broadway: Mother Lolita, Closet Land, The Seagull, Andrew Carnegie Presents The Jew of Malta. Off-Off-Broadway: Red Light District, The Life Effect, Marriage, Don Juan. Regional: A Doll's House, Under Milkwood, The Crucible, Uncle Vanya, Diary of a Scoundrel, The Cherry Orchard, Last Summer at Bluefish Cove. Film: Mixed Signals, Tales from 1001 Turkish Restaurant Nights. Co-Founder of The Kazbah Project. Member of Assembly and The Pack. MFA: Carnegie Mellon University/Moscow Art Theatre, BA Oberlin College.

ARTHUR LEWIS (Production Stage Manager) has helped stage events for V-Day 2001 at Madison Square Garden and Mumia 911, The National Day of Art to Stop the Execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal. TV credits include directing Cosby and Another World. Stage managed Saturday Night Live, The Chris Rock Show, Danny Hoch's Some People for HBO, Woodstock 99, The Tonys, The Kennedy Center Honors and The 53rd Presidential Inaugural Gala. Theater credits include The Vagina Monologues, Robert Wilson's The Golden Windows and The Knee Plays, and Philip Glass' 1000 Airplanes. Be Peace.

HEATHER RAFFO* (Production Assistant) Off Broadway: Over The River and Through the Woods, Macbeth and The Rivals. Regional: Othello, As You Like It, Macbeth, Comedy of Errors and Romeo and Juliet all with The Old Globe Theatre. London credits include the film Road to Nowhere and Hamlet at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Heather is currently working on both a play and a screenplay about the lives of Iraqi women.

CONNIE JULIAN (Executive Producer/Co-Curator) is the National Coordinator of the Artists Network of Refuse & Resist! She has produced numerous concerts, panels, and arts projects on behalf of Refuse & Resist! and other organizations. She was National Coordinator "MUMIA 911", the National Day of Art to Stop the Execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal. She is also a writer and cultural correspondent for the Revolutionary Worker newspaper.

NINA FELSHIN (Art Exhibit Curator) is the curator of exhibitions at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University.

The Actors

ANJALI BHIMANI* (Tigris & Euphrates) can currently be seen in Metamorphoses at 2nd Stage Theatre. Having just moved here from Chicago, her previous credits include The Odyssey (McCarter Theatre, Seattle Rep, Goodman Theatre), Metamorphoses (Mark Taper Forum, Seattle Rep, Berkeley Rep, Lookingglass Theatre Company), The Vagina Monologues (Apollo Theatre), Romeo and Juliet (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre), The Great Fire (Lookingglass Theatre Company), Arabian Nights (Lookingglass Theatre Company at BAM and The Steppenwolf Studio Theatre), Pentecost (Berkeley Rep), Mirror of the Invisible World (Goodman Studio Theatre), and Fahrenheit 451 (Stage Two). She can also be seen in the independent film The Medicine Show.

MALACHY CLEARY* (The New World Order and American Football) was last seen in Barbara Weichmann's The Holy Mother of Hadley, New York at the New Georges Theatre. Other recent credits are Born Yesterday at Syracuse Stage; L'il Brown Brothers for the Ma-Yi Co.; Stuck at the Rattlestick Theatre; and Belmont Avenue Social Club for the Working Theatre. He also just shot a pilot for PBS playing Tommy Wilhelm in Saul Bellow's Sieze the Day.

DORIS DIFARNICIO* (Narrator/Stage Directions) Doris Difarnecio was last seen in Tight Embrace, directed by Ruben Polendo at INTAR. She has worked at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, Lincoln Center Institute, INTAR, Ensemble International Theater, Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, Classical Stage Company, La Mama, Hartford Stage, Goodman Theater, Latino Chicago, and Steppenwolf Theater. She is currently a visiting theater artist for F.O.M.A., a native Mayan theater collective in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico.

ALI ELDIN (Somnia) is 11 years old and attends the 6th grade at Barnstable Academy in Mahwah, New Jersey. In addition to school plays, Ali has performed and toured New York and New Jersey schools for the past three years with Sandcastle Productions. Shows with Sandcastle include People Garden and New Kid. Ali is represented by Shirly Faison from the Carson Adler Agency.

PITER FATTOUCHE* (Somnia, Camel Station). Off Broadway: Mother Lolita. Chocolate In Heat with NYC Fringe Festival. Television includes One Life To Live and The Education of Max Bickford. BA in Theater Arts. I would like to send my love to my Cat Fatboy for unconditional support and fun! awareness awareness awareness!

RON CEPHAS JONES* (Bananas) Theater: Jesus Hopped the A Train (Labyrinth); Much Ado About Nothing (Don John/Long Wharf); Black Codes from the Underground (Lincoln Center Dir. Lab); Everybody's Ruby (Public Theater); House Arrest: First Edition (Arena Stge/Anna Deveare Smith); and Holiday Heart (MTC, NY) Awards: 1997 Critics Circle Outstanding Performance for an Actor in Thunder Knocking on the Door (Yale Rep), 1991 Audelco Best Actor Award for Don't Explain (Nuyorican Poets Cafe). Film credits include Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown, White, He Got Game, Paid in Full, Naked Acts. TV: NYPD Blue, FEDS, Law & Order, NY Undercover. Ron is also a critically acclaimed poet. (Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe).

DARIUSH KASHANI* (The Retreating World) Off-Broadway: Homebody/Kabul (New York Theatre Workshop), East is East (Manhattan Theatre Club). Regional: The Retreating World (McCarter Theater). TV: Guiding Light. MFA: Rutgers.

RANA KAZKAZ* (Tigris & Euphrates, Somnia) Off-Broadway: Mother Lolita, Closet Land, The Seagull, Andrew Carnegie Presents The Jew of Malta. Off-Off-Broadway: Red Light District, The Life Effect, Marriage, Don Juan. Regional: A Doll's House, Under Milkwood, The Crucible, Uncle Vanya, Diary of a Scoundrel, The Cherry Orchard, Last Summer at Bluefish Cove. Film: Mixed Signals, Tales from 1001 Turkish Restaurant Nights. Co-Founder of The Kazbah Project. Member of Assembly and The Pack. MFA: Carnegie Mellon University/Moscow Art Theatre, BA Oberlin College.

MATTHEW MABE* (Dirt) most recently received a Drama Desk Award for his work in the critically acclaimed production of Cobb at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. Prior New York credits include the world premiere of Terrance McNally's Corpus Christi at Manhattan Theatre Club, the American premiere of High Life and the role of Joe Orton in Nasty Little Secrets, both at Primary Stages as well as understudy for the Broadway company of The Iceman Cometh. Mr. Mabe's regional theatre credits include Yale Rep, Syracuse Stage, Denver Centre Theatre, Virginia Stage Company, Capitol Rep, Playmakers Rep, and Eugene O'Neill.

JASON MARKOUC (Dirt) holds an MFA from the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and has performed regionally in San Francisco and Cleveland as well as the Dorset Theater Festival. Recent credits include Look Back in Anger, The Cherry Orchard, Three Days of Rain, and Never the Sinner. He's new to the city and proud to be a part of this evening. Thanks to Rob, Matt, and Damon.

AFAF SHAWWA (Camel Station) Afaf Shawwa most recently appeared in The Living Theater's A Day in the Life of NYC, a performance in response to the September 11 incidents. She has performed in several off-off Broadway plays and student films. Favorite roles include Lenny (Crimes of the Heart) and Bettina Barnes (Psycho Beach Party). Afaf has been a theater and film student at the T. Schreiber Studio for three years. She dedicates this performance to the children of Iraq.

JOSEPH SIRAVO* (The New World Order) BROADWAY: Conversations With My Father. OFF-BROADWAY: Barber of Seville, Dark Rapture, Dream of a Common Language, Gemini, Mad Forest, My Night With Reg, The Root. REGIONAL: Antony & Cleopatra, A View from the Bridge, Othello, Savages, Sweeney Todd, The Three Sisters. TV: Cosby, Law & Order, NY Undercover, Third Watch, The Sopranos. FILM: A Day in Black & White, Carlito's Way, Labor Pains, Night Falls on Manhattan, 101 Ways, Snow Days, Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, Wise Girls.

ZISHAN UGURLU* (Somnia) holds an MFA in Acting from Columbia University. A native of Istanbul, she is a member of the LaMaMa Great Jones Repertory Company and LaMaMa Umbria, Italy. She has toured extensively in Europe and Asia with Andrei Serban's Fragments of a Greek Trilogy (Helen) and Ellen Stewart's King Oedipus (Iokaste). Film credits include a leading role in the feature film The Letter shown at the Cannes, Argentina and Calcutta film festivals. She has recently acted in Godard-Distant and Right directed by Robert Woodruff which was given an award in June in Paris by the International Nanterre Theatre Festival.

SCOTT WENTWORTH* (The New World Order) has starred on Broadway and at theatres across the U.S. and Canada, including ten seasons at the Stratford Festival.

OTIS YOUNGSMITH* (Bananas) Theater credits: Hobo Christmas (Actors Theater of America); Lotto (Union Square Theater); Don't Explain (Nuyorican Poets Cafe); Bums (Double Image Theater); The Might Jets (Public Theater), In the Wine Time, The Resurrection of Lady Lester (Manhattan Theater Club); Trio (New Federal Theater), and many more plays. Thanks to Reg and the Artists Network.