FringeNYC Previews

Extraordinary Rendition

Produced by Raptor Pack Theater

Author: James Balestrieri

In Extraordinary Rendition, language is paramount. Words are swords; death is their glint in the gloom. Political but not polemical, Extraordinary Rendition is rooted in the human condition rather than in any specific incident or era. A play for one actor, not a monologue, Extraordinary Rendition imagines the imagination of an interrogator in a world dominated by fear, a world that might be. The Major's very identity rests on the conviction that a mysterious and bizarre encoded broadcast is the work of a dangerous foe and that it is his sacred duty to decode it. Anyone who has ever wholly committed to a cause, campaign or idea can understand his obsession.

Extraordinary Rendition screams from the headlines, swirling around Supreme Court decisions, Congressional hearings, leaked memos, legal briefs, and court-martials describing shadowier versions of Gitmos and Abu Ghraib in places where law and rights are elastic or altogether absent. See Extraordinary Rendition now because soon, when justice, tolerance, empathy and the rule of law reign supreme, the brand of corrosion the play presents will be a relic, the Major just an interesting villain, the play itself something to be dusted off as a curiosity of history Would that this were so. But no. Extraordinary Rendition seems fated to be relevant for some time to come.

Extraordinary Rendition offers a unique take on the interrogator/suspect dichotomy. In it, it is the interrogator who is trapped in the amber of his own suspicions, suspicions solidified over a career of stalwart devotion, uncritical belief, and abject fear of an elusive enemy. Hannah Arendts term — the banality of evil — is half the story. The other half is that evil, coupled with authority, masquerades as righteousness, and the precarious mask of righteousness, in the theater, is always worth keeping an eye on.

Jim Balestrieri, playwright/director