Lidless and Love Lessons

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Visit the Lidless and Love Lessons website:
http://www.InterActTheatre.org

Lidless
In the fifteen years since Alice served in the U.S. Army as an interrogator at Guantánamo Bay, she has successfully reinvented herself and suppressed all memories of her prior life -- mostly through the aid of pharmaceuticals. She now lives contentedly, if not passionately, in Minnesota with her loving husband and precocious teenage daughter. That is, until Bashir, a Pakistani Muslim, shows up at Alice's flower shop and asks for part of her liver as compensation for the suffering he endured as one of her detainees. The request sets into motion a series of visceral and spiritual encounters among six characters whose lives will be forever connected and defined by a single act of inhumanity. This daring and beautiful new play is at once searingly poetic and incisively political as it explores the nature of trauma, the conflicting eroticism and brutality of violence, and the blurry line between revenge and redemption.

Love Lessons from Abu Ghraib
In 2006, renowned Philadelphia Yoga teacher and performer, Jennifer Schelter was invited by Lierman Trust for Humanitarian Law to accompany humanitarian lawyer Susan Burke on an expedition to Istanbul, Turkey, where she collected testimony from tortured Iraqis who had been imprisoned at Abu Ghraib. Schelter's role was to offer her expertise in mind-body connection and integral growth practices as a form of healing to the former detainees. Inspired by the improbable bravery and beauty of the stories she witnessed, Schelter used her unique artistic language, expertise in Yoga and spiritual growth to craft Love Lessons from Abu Ghraib, a one-woman performance chronicling her personal journey. The unique and touching piece examines the repercussions of torture and the different ways we attempt to heal ourselves by highlighting friendships, humor and the fear of confronting one of our democracy's most critical question: Do we really want to be known as a nation that tortures prisoners of war?