AFTERMATH PRODUCTION HISTORY
August
2007
Jessica Blank, in residence with NYTW at the annual summer residency
at Dartmouth College working on Liberty City, has a conversation with
Artistic Director James C. Nicola regarding the lack of information
about the Iraq war addressing the issues of civilians. The idea was
born that perhaps Jessica and her husband, Erik Jensen, based on their
prior work on The Exonerated, could do a documentary theatre
piece about the realities of civilian life in Iraq.
May
2008
The Ford Foundation grants Jessica and Erik the money to travel to interview
Iraqi refugees. With help from the organization CIVIC, Jessica and Erik
find connections to Iraqi refugees living in Jordan. They begin planning
their trip.
June
2008
Jessica and Erik travel to Amman, Jordan for two weeks and interview
37 Iraqi refugees. When they return from Jordan, the playwrights select
15 of the interviews and have these professionally translated and transcribed,
making sure that the detail and nuance of the original language is preserved.
August 2008
Jessica and Erik take the rough interviews to NYTW’s annual three-week
summer residency at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, with
plans to develop and shape the material with the help of fellow artists
and NYTW’s artistic staff. Five Arabic-speaking actors worked
through the transcripts in a series of informal readings and roundtable
discussions.
October 2008
NYTW continued its collaboration with Jessica and Erik to further develop
the play. The playwrights met regularly with NYTW’s artistic staff,
using them as resources to discuss the larger structural and thematic
issues of the piece. A reading took place at NYTW on October 20, 2008.
January
2009
With additional support from the Ford Foundation, NYTW held three special
invited readings of a new draft of the play on January 12-13, 2009 in
NYTW's Fourth Street Theatre, each followed by a discussion with the
writers. This version incorporated a translator character, who would
eventually become the structural device that tied all the stories together.
Soon after these readings, Jessica and Erik landed on the title for
the piece: Aftermath.
August
2009
Rehearsals for Aftermath begin at NYTW.
September
2009
Aftermath premieres at New York Theatre Workshop.
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