Event

Body of an American

Opening on October 17 and running through November 3 is the New Jersey premiere of Dan O'Briens Body of an American. If you do this, I will own you forever, words that haunted Canadian photojournalist Paul Watson. A single, stark photographof the body of an American soldier dragged from the wreckage of a Blackhawk helicopter through the streets of Mogadishureshaped the course of global events and won war photographer Paul Watson the Pulitzer Prize. Yet, he is haunted by that shutter click. Playwright Dan OBrien, struggling with ghosts of his own, reaches out to Watson, and the two forge a friendship as they reckon with the traumas that have shaped their lives. In this gripping true story, the two explore the ethical and personal consequences of the photograph, as well as the interplay between political upheaval and the experience of trauma in an age saturated by images and information. Winner of the inaugural Edward Kennedy Prize, the Horton Foote Prize for Outstanding New American Play, and the PEN Award for Drama, Body of an American is a bold, radically charged, theatrical and poetic true story that ranges from Afghanistan and Iraq to the Canadian High Arctic.