(I Am) Nobody’s Lunch

Obie Award-winning theatre company The Civilians presents a limited-run Off-Broadway engagement of its newest show, (I Am) Nobody’s Lunch. Written and directed by Steven Cosson, the show features eight original songs by Michael Friedman (“25 New Yorkers who will make their mark in 2005” Time Out NY). This is a dramatically revised version of the show presented at PS122 in September 2004.

(I Am) Nobody’s Lunch is an eccentric evening of cabaret-theater combining original music and text from interviews. This lively show about the politics of information attempts to answer the slippery question: How do we know what we know? Set in the frame of post 9/11 anxiety, misleading intelligence, government secrecy and embedded media, this question leads the company through the murky present state of American culture. The resulting show exploits The Civilians’ singular signature style, taking material from interviews with actual persons and transforming these conversations into a theatrical, musical event.

Interview subjects range from a policymaker at Homeland Security on the verge of a nervous breakdown to a plucky extraterrestrial (channeled by an equally funny human); from every Jessica Lynch in the phone book (who was willing to talk) to soldiers guarding the New York subway with unloaded weapons. Turning these interviews into a mercurial cabaret-play, a versatile cast inhabits an eclectic cast of characters, all taken from real life. Some subjects who provided source material for the original version have been re-interviewed and are joined by new characters ranging from a 10 year old girl (asked how one knows what is real and what is imaginary) to a 90 year old former librarian (who provides a unique viewpoint on the modern media).