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When Systems fail

Documentary live radio play based on the CIA torture report in cooperation with Amnesty International

Info

Premiere April 22, 2016, Kulturhaus Dock 4, Kassel
Written and directed by Dominik Breuer
Dramaturgy Gunnar Seidel
Speaker
Dominik Breuer, Gunnar Seidel, Irina Ries
Cooperation partner Amnesty Internatinal Kassel
co-production with Tafelhalle Nuremberg.
Funded by the City of Kassel, the Hessian Ministry of Science and Art, the Cultural Department of the City of Nuremberg and the Sebastian-Cobler-Foundation.

Awarded at the Hessian theatre days 2017 in the category "Understanding"

Download info as pdf (1,2MB)

About the project

"We must embrace our dark side. We must move in the shadow of the intelligence world. Much will have to happen in secret, without any discussion."
Dick Cheney (US vice president 2001 - 2009)

Paris, Bruxelles, Nice, Würzburg, Ansbach. Increasing uncertainty in European society. In the current fragile situation, the Brachland-Ensemble takes a look back at September 11 2001 and its impact on the way civil and human rights are dealt with - values that seem once again vulnerable in the current situation. The attacks of 09/11 changed the political and social mood enormously and led to the US government imprisoning and torturing people without any legal basis. The investigation report of the US Senate on the secret CIA interrogation and internment program uncovers the events and served the Brachland-Ensemble as a basis for this live radio play.

Three professional voice actors use a few simple props to bring to life a text that leaves the audience aghast; partially adapted into dialogue, the 600-page report is transformed into vivid yet almost inconceivable scenarios. What takes one’s breath away is not only the perfidy of the detention and torture system devised by the CIA, but also the conduct of a bureaucracy that failed when it mattered most. Against the backdrop of current global developments, and ten years after its premiere, this multi-award-winning production once again poses the question: Where are established democracies heading as the boundaries of what can be said and done are increasingly pushed outward?