Former Rusty Satellite Show guest Larry Muhammad has a new play being performed this week. I’m going to try to go, you should to. Here are the details:
Add to upcoming 9/11 observances this year a new Larry Muhammad play at Vault 1031 examining the prospect of homegrown terrorism and how it links to ongoing turmoil in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.
Titled MURDER THE DEVIL, it was a finalist for the Kentucky Theatre Association New Play Award in 2010 and Cincinnati Playwrights Initiative did a stage reading in 2011 at the Aronoff Center for the Arts in downtown Cincinnati.
“What inspired me to write the play was the arrest of some black guys in an FBI sting operation in 2006 for plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago,” said Muhammad, whose plays have been performed at Kentucky Center and Actors Theatre. “There was this FBI agent pretending to be an Arab terrorist and offering these guys money. And I thought: What if a real terrorist tried recruiting a real Chicago streetgang into the jihad? Now that would make an interesting piece of theatre.”
The script was further developed this year at New Play Slam, a workshop of Louisville theatre artists held monthly at Vault 1031, where it premieres Sept. 4, 5, 6, 7 and 11.
Set in Chicago, MURDER THE DEVIL involves an Al Qaeda reject who slips through Homeland Security on a bloodthirsty mission, recruits a treacherous street gang but learns too late who is hustling who. Racial animosities surface and heated disputes over killing in the name of God as the fate of a hostage hangs in the balance.
“It’s raw and edgy,” Muhammad said, “with complex characters from the wannabe terrorist and his parents trying to keep him out of trouble, to the ballsy hostage and unexpectedly patriotic black gangsters. I think audiences are going to like it.”
MURDER THE DEVIL
Sept. 4, 5, 6, 7 & 11
7:30 pm each night
Vault 1031
1031 S. Sixth Street, Louisville
$10 cash at the door
Reservations: barbara.cullen117@gmail.com
