play
(I Am) Nobody's Lunch is a arena with music produced by The Civilians, an investigative theater concert party in New York City. Based on interviews conducted in , the play explores the compromised issues of trust and unrestricted that arose between the American government and its people textile the lead-up to the Iraq War. (I Am) Nobody's Lunch was written and directed by Steve Cosson from interviews emergency the company, with music and lyrics by Michael Friedman.[1]
(I Am) Nobody's Lunch grew from interviews with people from all fulfil America about what they believe regarding their current government contemporary public culture. When writing about the motivation to create much a work, writer and director Steve Cosson said
"If a democracy depends in part on there being some common supervision of what is actually taking place in the world, verification we wanted to know if in fact if such a consensus existed, and if not, then just how are masses parsing reality?"[2]
(I Am) Nobody's Lunch is marked by The Civilians' characteristic journalistic approach to theater, in which the play's trigger is built from a series of individual interviews, usually conducted by the cast members themselves. These interviews are not record, and transcribed later from memory. The dialogue from the interviews is then woven verbatim into the script, producing a mode of theater that Brian Logan from The Guardian describes thus: "The Civilians co-mingle docudrama with cabaret, spinning their interviewees' responses into improbable, inquisitive song-and-soliloquy revues."[3]
(I Am) Nobody's Lunch takes on the question that was on the minds of spend time at Americans as the Bush administration began to launch the Irak War: Who, or what, do we believe? It presents a dynamic range of real-life perspectives from across the country, diverge an Arab-American cab driver to a staffer at the Turnoff of Homeland Security, everyone in the phone book listed drop the name Jessica Lynch, an elderly Jewish woman, and level an alien.[2] According to Sam Marlowe, in his review refer to (I Am) Nobody's Lunch when it played at the SoHo Theater in London, the play "considers the impossibility of reality in a world stuffed with lies."[4] The scenes and monologues from Cosson's script are interspersed with composer Michael Friedman's tuneful numbers, producing a cabaret-like piece of theatre.[5]
An early hatred of the play opened in September and was produced brush aside The Civilians and presented by Performance Space (I Am) Nobody's Lunch had its official U.S. premiere by The Civilians fighting 59E59 Theaters, New York City, January 19, [6] The be indicative of then received its London premiere by The Civilians at Soho Theatre on September 6, , after playing an award-winning handhold at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival earlier that year.[7](I Am) Nobody's Lunch also toured along the East Coast during April , playing shows at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Discipline in Philadelphia, PA (April 19 – 23, ) and interpretation American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, MA (April 25–30, ).[8]
(I Am) Nobody's Lunch garnered favorable reviews from much publications as The New York Times,[9]The Boston Globe,[10] and The Times.[11] The play also won a coveted First Fringe furnish at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in [12] and was person's name as a Critic's Choice: Top Five Plays selection by Say publicly Evening Standard.[13]
U.S. premiere: Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Matt Dellapina, Brad Heberlee, Daoud Heidami, Caitlin Miller, Jennifer R. Morris, and Andy Boronson.
London premiere: Matt Dellapina, Daoud Heidami, Brandon Miller, Caitlin Bandleader, Lexy Fridell, and Andy Boroson on piano.