ANDERS ALS WIR
A new play by Karen Malpede
translated from American English into German by Henning Bochert
In the wake of the climate apocalypse,
four rebels enact a daring plan
to give birth to something new –
to beings other than we.
A New York Times Critics’ Pick for “Theater This Season,” Fall 2019
The Play
After the Deluge, the privileged live in a hermetically sealed Dome. But, the underground aquifer and food supply are running out. Outbreaks of hate are on the rise and surveillance is extreme. Two young women, an obstetrician-gynecologist and a neuroscientist, her lover, join forces with a refugee janitor who was once a physician, and an elderly renowned linguist, in an unlikely plot to create a new, post-Homo sapiens species, other than we. The fate of life on earth hangs in the balance.
Her characters are strong and fascinating, her contexts brilliant and horrifying, and her tone always warm and, in the end, loving.
– Andrew Solomon, Ex-Vorsitzender des PEN American Centers
A utopian vision for a reconfigured race that will be “Other Than We” – hybrid creatures, human/non-human that will adapt and sustain themselves in the treacherous territory outside of The Dome. Malpede uses image-rich language and striking stage pictures to transmit an urgent call for global unity, imagination, transformation, and action.
– Cindy Rosenthal, The Theatre Times
A playful but powerful meditation on urgent philosophical questions . . . consciousness, language, evolution, life and death.
– Jo Mispel, Motherhood Later
Simultaneously unsettling, surreal and hopeful . . . a post-apocalyptic scenario in which survivors have a chance to remake the world . . . a grand vision, born of catastrophe, but with the possibility of triumph.
– Eleanor Bader, The Indypendent
It questions the origins of consciousness and thrives on the thrill of creating a better human species . . . Can the quartet of fugitives accomplish their outlandish goal?
– Lena Zeldovitch, Woman Around Town
Karen Malpede
(Co-Founder, Writer/director) author/director of 19 plays: Other Than We, Blue Valiant, Dinner During Yemen, part of “Imagine: Yemen” at The Irene Diamond Signature Theater, 2018, publication Kenyon Review, Oct, 2018; Extreme Whether, LaMama, 2018, Paris ARTCOP21, 2015, Theater for the New City, 2014; The Beekeeper’s Daughter, Theater for the New City, 2016 (revival), premiered 1995 at the Festival of World Drama, Veroli, Italy. “One of America’s most prominent political playwrights,” Marvin Carlson. Her seven books include Plays in Time: The Beekeeper’s Daughter, Prophecy, Another Life, Extreme Whether (Intellect, 2017), editor: Acts of War: Iraq & Afghanistan in Seven Plays (Northwestern, 2011), A Monster Has Stolen the Sun and Other Plays (Marlboro, 1987), editor: Women in Theater: Compassion & Hope (Drama Book, 1984). She is a frequent contributor to The Kenyon Review; short fiction and essays on theater, ecology and literature are published in TriQuarterly, Confrontations, The Drama Review, New Theatre Quarterly, New York Times, anthologies. McKnight National Playwrights Fellowship, Ludwig Vogelstein and NYFA (then, CAPS) playwriting awards. She is adjunct Associate Professor of Theater Arts and Environmental Justice at John Jay College, CUNY. MFA, Columbia.
[CV and synopsis quoted from theaterthreecollaborative.org]
[…] Karen Malpede’s Other Than We and Dawn King’s The Trials in early 2021, Cascade is the third play I am translating that […]