Playwright re-tells actions of activists in one-person shows
9/15/2000 News media contact: Linda Bloom · (646) 369-3759 · New York
NEW YORK (UMNS) - About a decade ago, Daniel Kinch decided he needed to write about people who were working hard to change the world but may have become lost to history "because they didn't have a huge public reputation."
One of his subjects, for example, was Petra Kelly, the German activist who founded the Green Party and was murdered in 1992. "You have a bunch of movements that essentially die with her," he noted.
When Kinch joined Washington Square United Methodist Church in New York - a Greenwich Village congregation with a strong social mandate - he began writing plays about some of these individuals for the church's theater company in residence, Kairos Theatre Company. He chose the format of one-person shows because the productions are "easy to tour," literally fitting into the trunk of a car.
His latest such endeavor, "On the Grid," will be performed several times in Prague between Sept. 22-24 by actor Ben Roberts. The show will be among the events scheduled by activists just before a meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in that Eastern European city.
"On the Grid" focuses on the charge that the IMF and World Bank use foreign assistance to developing countries as a way to exploit people unfamiliar with cash-based economies. Roberts plays "Jim," an otherwise anonymous banking official who explains to a group of aid workers that the real mission of financial institutions is not sponsoring well or bridge projects but getting developing countries "on the grid" by transforming them into cash economies in the Western mode.
"Grid" is one of the three one-act plays, "Grid/Pie/Clown," recently given a benefit performance by Kairos at the church. The second play, "A Good Day to Pie," focuses on an activist with the Biotic Baking Brigade, which staged a pie attack on Monsanto chief executive Robert Shapiro in 1998 to call attention to the bioengineering of food. The third, "A Clown, a Hammer, a Bomb and God," recounts how an activist Roman Catholic priest, Carl Kabat, dressed in a clown suit, broke into a Minuteman Missile Base in North Dakota and disabled a missile on Good Friday in 1994.
Kinch said that his plays are not pure biography. Realizing that many audiences may not know the background to an issue, he usually provides a bibliography and explains where his information was obtained. "I'm very careful to keep it factual," he added.
Often, a performance will be followed by a symposium allowing for questions and discussion. "Not everybody agrees with the actions of these folks, and I understand that," he said.
The "Clown" play has been performed some 60 times in the United States and Europe since premiering at the 1997 New York International Fringe Festival. Roberts performed the play during the Hague Appeal for Peace in 1999 in the Netherlands. There, Roberts made contact with members of ASEED, an organization concerned with ecological justice in developing countries, and an invitation to Prague followed.
The "Pie" play was created after Rebecca Pridmore, a Washington Square member, was the successful bidder for Kinch's offer of a one-act play at a church fund-raiser. He wrote the play specifically for the actress. The show, originally produced at Kairos Theatre's 1998 One-Act Festival, has been presented at more than a dozen other venues, including Drew University's "Greening of the Church" conference.
Kairos also does college and church tours of the plays, depending on schedules and funding, Kinch said. More information is available by calling the Kairos Theatre box office at (212) 714-5392 or sending an e-mail to kairos_co@hotmail.com.
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