Now U.S. invades Hammersmith

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Embedded: The play half America didn't want performed @ Riverside Studios.

EMBEDDED was the word on every journalist's lips as the US and British armies converged on Saddam's Iraq. EMBEDDED within a front-line unit, in some cases for weeks, was what many of them had to be to get anywhere near the action.

And now EMBEDDED is a play. A powerful new piece of satirical theatre written by the actor and playwright TIM ROBBINS, who also directs. Tim starred in some of the most acclaimed films of our time, including The Player, The Shawshank Redemption, Dead Man Walking, Bob Roberts, and most recently won the Academy Award for his role in Mystic River

After being publicly vilified for opposing the war in Iraq, TIM ROBBINS, already an established playwright, wrote EMBEDDED which has been produced to acclaim in Los Angeles and in New York City, Off-Broadway at the Public Theater  which were sell outs.

EMBEDDED is a "very smart, very screwball and ultimately very chilling comedy", dramatising the interactions of journalists and U.S. troops during the invasion of 'Gomorrah', an oil-rich rogue state ruled by the 'Butcher of Babylon'. Reporters are pictured caving in to military authority, personified by their "minder," a Colonel Hardchannel, who refers to them as "maggot journalists."

In the play ROBBINS asks tough topical questions about the pros and cons of the Pentagon's strategy of 'embedding' journalists with military troops, about the public's right to hear bad news along with the heroic, and about the feasibility of filtering the real stories through the spin in a modern-day, televised-round-the-clock war.

'The media effectively acted as a publicist for the administration, reporting press releases from the Pentagon as front page news, and marginalizing and ignoring any voices of dissent.'  Tim Robbins 

EMBEDDED contains some delicious satire on the war and in particular the way the Pentagon directed its own reality TV Show 'Prime Time War'.

EMBEDDED is a raucous, high-voltage comedy...a play about censorship and control, a commentary on the writers, politicians and the media feeding-frenzy which attends a modern international conflict.

But at its heart it focuses on the bravery of the men and women actually risking and sacrificing their lives.

 

15/08/04