Edie Falco and Brooke Shields to Help Kick Off Culture Project’s Speak Truth to Power

Edie Falco and Brooke Shields will be the special guest stars for the initial performance of Ariel Dorfman’s Speak Truth to Power on Sunday, November 5 at the Culture Project. The play has been adapted from Kerry Kennedy’s book about 51 heroes in the field of human rights, such as Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel and Sister Helen Prejean. It will be directed by Terry Kinney and will run Sunday and Monday evenings through December 18.

The show’s permanent cast will include Carolyn Baeumler, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Megan Byrne, Stephen Kunken, Aasif Mandvi, Lois Markle, Ellen McLaughlin, Charles Parnell, Keith Randolph Smith, and Danton Stone. Among the celebrities who have signed up for guest spots are Gabriel Byrne, Rosario Dawson, Griffin Dunne, Kim Fields, Charles Grodin, Julianna Margulies, Lynn Redgrave, Isabella Rosellini, and Fisher Stevens. A special benefit performance of the play took place on October 6, with guest performers including Lorraine Bracco, Martin Sheen, Sharon Stone, and Sigourney Weaver.

Dorfman is the author of such plays as Death and the Maiden, Purgatorio, and The Other Side, and the novels Widows and The Nanny and the Iceberg. Kinney is a co-founder of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago; his New York directing credits include the Vineyard Theatre’s productions of After Ashley and Beautiful Child. Among his many credits as an actor are the Broadway production of The Grapes of Wrath, for which he received a Tony Award nomination, and the HBO series Oz.