Cutting Ball resident playwright Andrew Saito has made the first two scenes of Mount Misery: A Comedy of Enhanced Interrogations available for the public. Click here to read this 9-page excerpt featuring Frederick Douglass and Donald Rumsfeld! Mount Misery receives its world premiere at Cutting Ball Theater May 8-June 7, 2015.

Playwright’s Notes by Andrew Saito Mount Misery: A Comedy of Enhanced Interrogations required me to build new muscles as a playwright in order to create the most demanding and challenging play I have ever written. I have authored an uncountable number of drafts, and the excised pages outnumber those that remain! My full-time playwrighting residency […]

Dramaturgy by Rem Myers Oration, language, and words played a significant role in both Frederick Douglass and Donald Rumsfeld’s lives. Included in this program are two speeches from these men as well as an excerpt from the Torture Memos, a series of memos describing various “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Frederick Douglass,  August 3, 1857 Let me […]

Drafted by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo and signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee in August 2002 Finally, you would like to use a technique called the “waterboard.” In this procedure, the individual is bound securely to an inclined bench, which is approximately four feet by seven feet. The individual’s feet are generally […]

Director’s Notes by Rob Melrose At the beginning of the process of developing Mount Misery we were fascinated with the questions that arose imagining Rumsfeld and Douglass interacting through time.  The characters of Edward Covey (the overseer of the plantation Mount Misery and Douglass’ torturer) and Joyce Rumsfeld were originally tangental to the main relationship […]

  Cutting Ball Theater: How did you get involved with the project? Sinaiko: I am an Associate Artist with Cutting Ball and was able to find out about it when it was still in the planning stages. I was very intrigued by the project and made sure I followed its progress. CBT: What is it […]

Q: How did you get involved with the project? Adams: So, Cutting Ball has this really amazing play and they’re looking to cast the role of Fred, open to the idea of bringing someone up from Los Angeles. Becca Wolff, a good friend who I’ve worked with in LA and is now directing and teaching […]

Q: How did the idea of writing Mount Misery come to you? Saito: While riding a stationary bike at the University of Iowa gym, I read an article about oyster farming in the Chesapeake Bay. There was a two-sentence mention of the fact that Donald Rumsfeld owned a vacation home there, which had previously been […]