Contact: Rick Miramontez / Jon Dimond [email protected] / [email protected] (212) 695-7400 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, PLEASE IMPACT FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES NEW YORK PREMIERE ENGAGEMENT OF “S P E A K T R U T H T O P O W E R” OCTOBER 15 – DECEMBER 18, 2006 A NEW PLAY BY ARIEL DORFMAN BASED ON THE BOOK BY KERRY KENNEDY WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY EDDIE ADAMS DIRECTED BY TERRY KINNEY New York, NY – Culture Project (Allan Buchman, Artistic Director) is proud to announce that the theatrical adaptation of Speak Truth To Power will play Culture Project’s mainstage theatre space (45 Bleecker Street) Sundays at 7:00 p.m. and Mondays at 8:00 p.m. beginning Sunday, October 15 through Monday, December 18, 2006. Adapted from Kerry Kennedy’s book by noted playwright Ariel Dorfman (Death and the Maiden) and directed by Terry Kinney (HBO’s OZ), Speak Truth To Power is an unforgettable affirmation of the human spirit that chronicles the struggles of 51 activists, including the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Helen Prejean, and many other lesser known people who have been championing human rights the world over. Speak Truth To Power is the global human rights initiative founded by Kerry Kennedy and Nan Richardson, which brings people face-to-face with courageous human rights heroes. This multifaceted project presents inspiring stories of 51 women and men from over 40 countries who have stood up to oppression at great personal risk in the non-violent pursuit of human rights including demilitarization, children of war, environmental activism, and religious self-determination. For more information, please visit www.SpeakTruthToPower.org. Culture Project is also pleased to announce that a core cast of theater veterans including Carolyn Baeumler, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Megan Byrne, Stephen Kunken, Aasif Mandvi, Lois Markle, Ellen McLaughlin, Charles Parnell, Keith Randolph Smith, and Danton Stone will be supplemented by a rotating cast of celebrities, which will be announced shortly. >>>>> Page 2 Speak Truth to Power will be launched in a star-studded benefit performance Friday, October 6 at Chelsea Piers featuring Lorraine Bracco, Giancarlo Esposito, Charles Grodin, Matthew Modine, Robin Wright Penn, Gloria Reuben, Martin Sheen, Christian Slater, Sharon Stone, and Sigourney Weaver. In addition, Ethel Kennedy will present the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Ripple Of Hope Award to President William Jefferson Clinton for his commitment to a more just and peaceful world. The play by award-winning playwright Ariel Dorfman premiered in 2000 at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington D.C. and has toured to over 20 cities in the United States as well as throughout Greece, London, Madrid, Barcelona, Sydney, Helsinki, Rome, Geneva, Seoul, Florence, and Mantua. Plans for the future include performances in Nashville, Paris, Beirut, and Qatar in addition to the New York City run. Tickets are priced at $20.00 and $40.00 and are available through Ticketmaster by calling 212-307-4100, by visiting www.ticketmaster.com, or in person at the Culture Project box office (45 Bleecker Street at Lafayette). Speak Truth to Power is a centerpiece event of the Impact Festival, the New York Citywide arts festival focusing on human rights, social justice, and political action. IMPACT runs from September 12 – October 22, 2006. The 42-day festival, with more than 80 events (theater, film, dance, music, visual art, debate, etc.), takes place at Culture Project (45 Bleecker Street) and at venues throughout New York City – from the New York Public Library to The Knitting Factory, and from El Museo Del Barrio to Town Hall. Tickets are currently on sale for all events. For further information on all IMPACT events, call (212) 253-7017 or visit www.impactfestival.org. BIOS ARIEL DORFMAN, a Chilean-American writer of Argentine origin, holds the Walter Hines Page Chair at Duke University. His books, written both in Spanish and English, have been translated into more than 40 languages and his plays staged in over 100 countries. He has received numerous international awards, including the Laurence Olivier Award (for Death and the Maiden, which was made into a feature film by Roman Polanski). Among his novels are Widows, Konfidenz, The Nanny and the Iceberg, and Blake's Therapy. His latest works are Desert Memories (Lowell Thomas Award for best travel book) and the plays Purgatorio, The Other Side, and Picasso’s Closet. He has also recently published a novel, Burning City, with his son Joaquín and a collection of journalism, essays, and poetry in Other Septembers, Many Americas. His short story “Gringos” received the O. Henry award as one of the best stories published in 2005. He contributes regularly to major newspapers in the United States and worldwide. He has been active in the defense of human rights for many years. KERRY KENNEDY started working in the field of human rights in 1981 when she investigated abuses committed by U.S. immigration officials against refugees from El Salvador. Since then, her life has been devoted to the fight for equal justice, to the promotion and protection of basic rights, and to the preservation of the rule of law. She is the author of Speak Truth To Power, a book of profiles of fifty human rights defenders around the world. She has led forty human rights delegations to twenty-seven countries. At a time of diminished idealism and growing cynicism about public service, her life and lectures are testaments to the commitment to the basic values of human rights. Kennedy is on the Board of Directors of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, a non-profit organization that addresses the problems of social justice. She established the RFK Center for Human Rights to ensure the protection of rights codified under the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. The Center provides an ongoing base of support to leading human rights defenders around the world. The Center uncovers and publicizes abuses such as torture, disappearances, repression of free speech, and child labor; urges Congress and the U.S. administration to highlight human rights in foreign policy; supplies activists with the resources they need to advance their work; and creates other programs to advance respect for human rights. Kennedy has led delegations to, and negotiated with, government officials from all over the world and has worked on diverse human rights issues such as child labor, disappearances, indigenous land rights, judicial independence, freedom of expression, ethnic violence, impunity, the environment, and women's rights. Kennedy has appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN, among others, and her commentaries and articles have been widely published. Kerry Kennedy is a graduate of Brown University and Boston College Law School. TERRY KINNEY co-founded Steppenwolf Theatre with Gary Sinise and Jeff Perry in 1976. Since then, he has directed several plays for Steppenwolf, including The WellAppointed Room, The Violet Hour, A Streetcar Named Desire, A Clockwork Orange, ...And a Nightingale Sang, Of Mice and Men, My Thing of Love, and Streamers. In New York he directed After Ashley, Beautiful Child, and Eyes for Consuela. Most recently he directed the short film Kubuku Rides (This Is It) for Steppenwolf Films. He has also acted in several plays including Balm in Gilead, Orphans, Another Time, Steppenwolf’s Broadway production of Buried Child, and The Grapes of Wrath, for which he received a Tony nomination. Kinney has also appeared in several films, including The Game of Their Lives, Save the Last Dance, Sleepers, Fly Away Home, No Mercy, Last of the Mohicans, The Firm, and Devil in a Blue Dress. On television, Mr. Kinney played in “The Laramie Project,” “CSI: New York,” “Oz,” and “Wallace,” the TNT movie. NAN RICHARDSON is an editor and writer with international museums and publishers for two decades, she is the author or co-author of many books, including Pandemic: Facing AIDS, Conversaciones, Subterranea, Havana: the Revolutionary Moment, Malcolm X Speaks Out, Mothers & Daughters, Gorilla, Swimmers, Towards a Bigger Picture, Animal Planet (CD-rom), Wild Love, Wild Babies, Drag Diaries, Fishy, Furry, Feathery, Scaly Facts, The White T, Lillian Bassman. She has curated over 30 museum and gallery shows and founded Umbrage Editions, specializing in award-winning visual books and as part of its cultural social/political mission, creates, produces, and manages 12 exhibitions, 3 websites, a list of almost 60 books, and with Kerry Kennedy, the Speak Truth play (with over 1000 performances amateur and professional in 9 countries and seven languages to date), and the Speak Truth human rights NGO (which has produced a PBS documentary, and 5 shorts on Court TV). Recent Umbrage titles include Divided Portraits, Still Life, Carny, Dressed to Kill, Tribal Alphabet, Born into Brothels, Journal, Histories are Mirrors, Pandemic: Facing AIDS (a book, 3 exhibitions, music CD, and 1.2 million edition educational curriculae), Shekina, 2468, The Last Paradise, From the Pain Come the Dream, In a Most Beautiful Life, Fuji, Havana: The Revolutionary Moment, Children of Ceausescu, Eclipse, RFK Funeral Train, Anthony Fry, Blood and Honey, Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Too Much Time: Women in Prison, American Hollow, Poetics of Place, and The Tibetans. Richardson has written for The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Boston Review of Books, Stern, Granta, The Massachusetts Review, Interview, Art News, Artforum, Art & Auction, Art in America, Journal of Art, Mother Jones, and taught widely on photography and bookmaking. She lives in New York with husband Andrew Karsch, daughter Isabel, and son James. # # # # #