Lidless

Directed by the festival's producing director, Ed Herendeen, and staged in-the-round -- a format that emphasizes its themes of secrets and exposure -- "Lidless" centers on Alice (an intense Eva Kaminsky), a Guantanamo Bay interrogator whose techniques include sexually molesting a detainee named Bashir (the imposing Barzin Akhavan).

'Eelwax Jesus' adds trippy dimension to Contemporary American Theater Festival 2010

Domestic fallout from the war on terror underlies "Lidless" by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, which Herendeen will also stage.

Backstage: Paul Scott Goodman and the rebirth of 'Son of a Stand Up Comedian' Jane Horwitz 2010

Freighted with overly pointed lines ( "When you're a florist, life and death is in your hands") and motifs so neatly interlocked that they recall metaphysical poetry (the color of Rhiannon's goldfish is compared to the orange of detention-camp jumpsuits, for example), "Lidless" can be heavy-handed -- but the actors invest their characters with riveting vitality.

'Eelwax Jesus' adds trippy dimension to Contemporary American Theater Festival 2010

Domestic fallout from the war on terror underlies "Lidless" by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, which Herendeen will also stage.

Backstage: Paul Scott Goodman and the rebirth of 'Son of a Stand Up Comedian' Jane Horwitz 2010

In "Lidless," by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, an army veteran named Alice, who worked as an interrogator at Guantanamo, tries to forget the way superiors ordered her to use feminine wiles to humiliate and abuse Muslim prisoners.

Two playwrights stage diverse impressions of war at W.Va. festival 2010

The cast of Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's "Lidless," for instance, does a stellar job fleshing out that play's contrivances.

'Eelwax Jesus' adds trippy dimension to Contemporary American Theater Festival 2010

"Lidless" was Cowhig's graduate thesis at the James A. Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.

Two playwrights stage diverse impressions of war at W.Va. festival 2010

Sauron and his master Morgoth were asexual and global in ways that Trujillo never was, but all three Dark Lords (Morgoth, Sauron, Trujillo) sought to achieve total tyrannies, the Lidless Eye everywhere, and there's much in their projects that resonates.

Junot Diaz discusses his first two books, Drown and the The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao 2010

Lidless paint cans fill and spill over onto the ground.

Smile for the Camera Kelle James 2010

It could show the Lidless Eye of Sauron slowly blinking open over the ice fields of central Greenland and have less doom in it.

Making Light: Snowpocalypse Part Next 2009