City Garage presents

For City Garage by Charles A. Duncombe, Jr.

November 3 – November 12, 2001

Directed by Frederique Michel

Production Design by Charles A. Duncombe, Jr.

Cast:

Jonathan Cobb

David Frank

Lejla Hadzimuratovic

Jonathan Liebhold

Freddy Nager

Stephen Pocock

Bo Roberts

Paul M. Rubenstein

Eric Talon

Technical Staff:

Light, Sound, and Set Design Charles A. Duncombe, Jr.

Assistant Director Tee Frisby

Stage Managers Kimberly Forsythe, Mark Rebernik

Light/Sound Operator Victoria Coulson

Music by Tchaikovsky, Myka Polo, Beda

This production is based on the actual statements of participants, witnesses, victims, and human rights workers involved in the current conflict in Chechnya; many of the direct quotes and incidents are drawn from the remarkable and harrowing article by Maura Reynolds published in the Los Angeles Times; others come from statements recorded by Human Rights Watch in their ongoing investigations in the region, and also from Radio Netherlands and BBC News reports. The acts of violence recounted are real; the motives and emotions of those who committed them, however, are more speculative. Is it possible to know what is in the hearts and minds of men who have committed such atrocities? We have presented them as they have presented themselves, but have also attempted to fill in the blank beyond the numbness or rationalizations, for it is in that blank that resides the troubling and perhaps unanswerable question of how and why such atrocities have been committed not just in Chechnya but throughout the history of humanity. We read about Rwanda or Sierra Leone or Chechnya and it is easy to dismiss such things as horrors half a world away. They are not. They are on our own doorstep. They are a product of the world we have made, and a capacity for and an addiction to violence and cruelly within ourselves which we have failed to defeat. As one character in the piece puts it, "Those things happened in the Dark Ages, not now. It’s not really possible for people to act like that, is it?"

Is it?

The Republic of Chechnya declared its independence from the Russian Federation in 1991, just after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, but its unilateral declaration was generally ignored by the international community. In 1994, Russian forces entered the breakaway republic in an effort to force a reconciliation with Moscow. The war, closely and critically covered by a newly free Russian press, was unpopular with the Russian people. The 1996 peace agreement that ended fighting in the region left the question of independence unresolved.

In the fall of 1999, after a bombing campaign in Moscow that was generally blamed on Chechen separatists, roughly 90,000 Russian troops re-entered Chechnya in a renewed effort to subdue the republic. Despite widespread reports of persistent human rights abuses by the Russian military, especially in connection with the ruthless subjugation of the Chechen capitol of Grozny, the current conflict has received more favorable coverage from the Russian media and has been supported by most of the Russian people, though in recent months that support has begun to wane.

To learn more about how to take action to help stop human rights abuses in Chechnya, please visit the website for Human Rights Watch at wvvw.hrwcalifornia.org or call (310) 477-5540. You can get more information on advocacy efforts, find out how to make a financial contribution, or how to volunteer your time.