Page 73 Productions Announces LIDLESS Post-Show Event, 10/12

PAGE 73 PRODUCTIONS (Liz Jones & Asher Richelli, Executive Directors), currently presenting the acclaimed New York premiere of Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's Lidless, will present a post-show event on Wednesday, October 12th, The Stress of Guantanamo, featuring Dr. Kate Porterfield, Prof. Ramzi Kassem, and Gitanjali S. Gutierrez and moderated by Michelle Shephard.

Lidless is enjoying a limited engagement at WalkerSpace (46 Walker Street) through Saturday, October 15th only. Tea Alagi? directs a cast that includes Danielle Skraastad (All My Sons on Broadway; The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide..., Public/Signature; The Wake, Public); Laith Nakli (Aftermath, NYTW; War, Rattlestick); Thom Rivera (Distracted, Oregon Shakespeare; Much Ado About Nothing, NY Classical Theatre); Maha Chehlaoui (Aftermath, NYTW; Peer Gynt, Guthrie); and Emma Galvin (David Cromer's Our Town Off-Broadway; The Power of Birds, 3Graces Theatre).

Fifteen years after serving at Guantanamo Bay, Alice has medicated away her memories of Gitmo and nested with her husband and daughter in the Midwest. But when Bashir, a former Gitmo detainee, finds his way to Alice's flower shop, his demands force Alice to reconcile their shared past, splintering the civilian life she's so carefully arranged. Lidless explores the nature of trauma, the conflicting eroticism and brutality of violence, and the blurry line between revenge and redemption. The human body is the central staging ground of this drama: from the abuses of prison and the power of sex to the ravages of disease and the physical toll of shame and guilt, Lidless maps a nation's political actions onto the private bodies of its citizens and enemies.

Join the conversation with moderator Michelle Shephard (Toronto Star reporter and author of Decade Of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism's Grey Zones and Guantanamo's Child: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr) hosting Kate Porterfield (Chair of the American Psychological Association's Task Force on the Psychosocial Effects of War on Children), Ramzi Kassem (Associate Professor of Law at the City University of New York where he directs the Immigrant & Refugee Rights Clinic), and Gitanjali S. Gutierrez (counsel for Mohammed al Qahtani, a Saudi citizen detained in Guantánamo, who was subjected to the "first special interrogation plan,") for a special post-performance discussion: "The Stress of Guantanamo."

Since the creation of the Guantanamo Bay detention center by the United States administration in 2002, questions have raged about harsh interrogation practices that were practiced there and whether those actions constitute torture or violate the Geneva conventions. But there is no question that the prison's very existence has had a significant impact on those who were detained there, those who work there, and ultimately on the American psyche. Now hear from four people at the front lines of this story, including attorneys Gitanjali S. Gutierrez and Prof. Ramzi Kassem who have represented Gitmo detainees, psychologist Dr. Kate Porterield who has evaluated detainees at Guantanamo, and our moderator, journalist and author Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star who has been covering the "war on terror" for ten years. This panel discussion is a free event following the performance on October 12h at 7:30pm

To purchase tickets or for more information, visit www.p73.org or call 212/352-3101.