Another Life Starring Obie Award Winner George Barteneiff

Brooklyn, NY, March 8 – 24 Irondale and Theater Three Collaborative are proud to present Another Life a play written and directed by Karen Malpede and starring four time Obie Award winner George Barteneiff. Performances will run from March 8 – March 24 playing Tuesdays at 7pm and Wednesday through Saturday at 7:30pm. Each evening the audience will share a dialogue with a speaker as part of “A Festival of Conscience”. Festival speakers will range from human rights activists, lawyers, and authors who have helped influence the shape of Another Life.

A roller-coaster ride, surreal and real, through the past ten years, Another Life tells of the titanic struggle between a mogul and his physician daughter who become embedded in the war on terror/torture program. Greed, war-lust and sexual enslavement lead to a subtle but growing resistance and whistle-blowing.  The play created a sensation at the Art of Justice: 9/11 Performance Project at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, last September.

Another Life, called “Stinging & Satirical” by the Kenyon Review which published a long excerpt from the play in the Fall 2010 issue, had a first reading at Dixon Place and received an On the Road travel grant from Theater Communications Group and was presented as a staged reading at the National Theater of Kosovo, in June 2011.  

George Bartenieff, four-time Obie Award winner, stars as the mogul Handel and has been with the production from the start; Christen Clifford (“Baby Love”) is his wife, Tess. They will be joined for the Irondale run by Susan Hyon (“Happy Hour,” Atlantic Theater), Abbas Noori Abbood, a television and theater actor from Baghdad who came to New York in 2009, Andrew Guilarte (“Invasion,” Obie Award Best Play), and Abraham Makany (“The Brig,” Obie Award Best Ensemble). Karen Malpede, a McKnight National Playwright’s Fellow and NYFA winner, is also editor of Acts of War: Iraq & Afghanistan in Seven Plays.

Many of the writers, lawyers and activists whose work influenced the creation of Another Life are participating in A Festival of Conscience. Darius Rejali, author of Torture and Democracy, one of the world’s authorities on torture, will speak on Opening Night, March 8; Mark Danner, author of many ground-breaking articles and books on the U.S. torture program, including the forthcoming Torture and the Forever War, will speak March 21;  Lawyer Susan Burke and journalist Donovan Webster, who interviewed hundreds of survivors tortured by private contractors in Abu Ghraib will speak March 9; Joshua Phillips, None of Us Were Like this Before, about the effects of doing torture on U.S. soldiers, speaks on a panel March 10 with Zeke Johnson from Amnesty.  Tom Parker, National Security Director for Amnesty, and Baher Azmy, Legal Director for Center for Constitutional Rights speak March 14, about ten years of Guantanamo;  Pardiss Kabriaei, also from CCR will speak March 16 on a panel titled the War on Terror Comes Home.  Gabor Rona, from Human Rights First; Jonathan Hafetz, Seton Hall and Alexander Abdo, ACLU, speak March 23.  Other speakers are from Witness to Torture, Rabbis for Human Rights and the National Campaign Against Torture. Young performers from Bailey’s Café in Bedford-Stuyvesant will also appear. Others to be announced.