A riveting play, “the eradication of diphtheria tetanus” which exposes an intimate window on the anatomy of the seeds of a revolution
By: Waterside Productions, Inc.
Within seven months of feeling benighted by the first authoritarian Administration in US history, Mr. Henry Christian has now dramatically shifted his attention with military precision to the optic mount and other components of a deadly weapon he keeps in the rucksack he has exchanged with his old briefcase.
What ensues is deftly carried out, but with disastrous consequences.
Christian is captured and without trial or benefit of a single phone call, locked away in the highest maximum security prison anywhere in the world. It is there that he is introduced to a most perplexing and untrustworthy cellmate. Both men are under continuous surveillance, yet by turns – from medical panic, to cavalier divulgence, even confession – the two desperate men engage in surreal conversations exploring the history of “what if?”; the nature of ethical resilience, moral resolution and civic ambiguities, in the most sinister face of carrot and stick; of tyranny, complicity and disorienting subterfuge.
In the post-modernist tradition of the Theater of the Absurd; and of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” and “The Unnamable,” Tobias’s “the eradication of diphtheria tetanus” challenges every preconception of political and social apathy by laying bare the elusive but ultimately eruptive chain of thoughts that brings powerlessness into a position of absolute clarity, conviction and effective action.
Condemned to 150-square feet of cellblock, Tobias’ two character, two-act play provides a bullet-proof window on the essence of revolution. Exploring the fragility of human history and all the lives swept away in its tumultuous paths, “the eradication of diphtheria tetanus” makes vivid and clear that tenacity in the human spirit aimed at a social change that is lodged, however painfully, in all which we continue to believe in; that which we hold to be beautiful, virtuous and dear.
Author, ecologist and filmmaker Michael Charles Tobias’s scientific and artistic endeavors span the globe. His prodigious and provocative body of work includes the ten-hour dramatic miniseries, “Voice of the Planet,” “World War III: Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millennium,” the 1826-page literary epic, “The Adventures of Mr. Marigold,” “Chateau Beyond Time,” “A Day in the Life of Ireland,” A Day in the Life of India,” “Antarctica: The Last Continent,” “Biotopia,” 21st Century Solitude,” “Ideal Algebra,” “The Strange Life & Disappearance of English Milligrams,” “Rage and Reason,” “Codex Orfeo,” “Sanctuary: Global Oases of Innocence,” “The Theoretical Individual: Imagination, Ethics and the Future of Humanity,” “Anthrozoology: Embracing Co-Existence in the Anthropocene,” and his feature documentary trilogy for PBS, “No Vacancy,” “Mad Cowboy,” and “Hotspots.” Most of his works are collaborations with his partner/wife, Jane Gray Morrison.
A recipient of the international “Courage of Conscience Prize,” Tobias has been likened to “The Carl Sagan of the humanities.” One critic said of his film “No Vacancy” that this was to the overpopulation crisis, what Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” was to climate change. Tobias is an Honorary Member of the Club of Budapest; a member of the Russian International Global Research Academy, as well as the Russian Public Academy of Sciences. He’s been on faculties at Dartmouth College, the University of California-Santa Barbara and the University of New Mexico, among several other universities.
Michael Charles Tobias
Michael Tobias is available for interviews. Review copies and pictures from the book are available immediately for journalists and book reviewers, both online and in print.
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