Winner, 2013 Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American
History
Winner, 2014 Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play
Mogadishu, 1993. Paul is a Canadian photojournalist who is about to take
a picture that will win him the Pulitzer Prize. Princeton, the present
day, Dan is an American writer who is struggling to finish his play
about ghosts. Both men live worlds apart but a chance encounter over the
airwaves sparks an extraordinary friendship that sees them journey from
some of the most dangerous places on earth to the depths of the human
soul. Flying from Kabul to the Canadian High Arctic, The Body of an
American sees two actors jump between more than thirty roles in an
exhilarating new form of documentary drama. It urgently places these two
men's battles - both public and private -against a backdrop of some of
the world's most iconic images of war.
"A feisty docu-drama about Paul Watson...a fascinating mix of troubled
and troubling biography and autobiography...holds you in a steely
grip." - Time Out
"An engrossingly subjective docu-drama which feels psychologically acute
and politically important...a really superb piece of theatre." - The
Stage
"The Body of an American is a play about writing a play but it's also
an intricate meditation on the nature of memory and guilt." - Evening
Standard
"A play that tightens its grip as it probes where war lives, and
discovers we each carry it inside ourselves." - Guardian
"Provides ample food for thought... Moment by moment the livewire, oddly
introspective theatrical experience keeps us on our toes, and
accumulatively it presents us with a debate about where we should draw
the line between observation and involvement, what's good about
curiosity and what's bad." - Telegraph
Dan O'Brien is a playwright and poet from New York, currently living
in Los Angeles. His play The Body of an American premiered at Portland
Center Stage, directed by Bill Rauch, and received the inaugural Edward
M. Kennedy Prize for Drama, as well as the PEN Center USA Award for
Drama. His debut poetry collection, War Reporter, published in the UK
and the US, received the 2013 Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize.
O'Brien's previous plays have been produced off-Broadway and regionally
in the US at Second Stage Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Actors'
Theatre of Louisville, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and elsewhere.
