SPIES
FOR THE POPE
A picaresque spy story of a free thinking philosopher
(and his some time lover) recruited by the Vatican for an impossible mission:
to prevent the Thirty Years War.
ABOUT
THE PLAYWRIGHT
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Douglas Lackey in China |
Playwright Douglas Lackey has two lives, as a playwright and a philosophy professor. He is a Professor of Philosophy at Baruch College, CUNY, where he has taught since 1972. But he has a 16 year relationship with Theater for the New City, which has presented all his plays to-date.
His first play presented there, "Kaddish in East Jerusalem" (2003), dealt with issues of the Second Intifada.
His "Daylight Precision" (2014) was a historical drama examining "just war" theories through an unsung hero of World War II, Gen. Haywood Hansell.
His "Arendt-Heidegger: A Love Story" (2018) earned critical praise and drew sellout audiences. It dramatized the unlikely romance between Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. In the 1920’s, they had a passionate affair. In the 1930’s, Heidegger became an ardent Nazi while Arendt became an ardent Zionist. After the war, they continued to correspond and meet in one of the more puzzling relationships of twentieth century intellectual history.
In 2019, TNC presented his "Ludwig and Bertie,"
a play that charted the forty-year love/hate relationship between Bertrand
Russell and his most famous student, Ludwig Wittgenstein.
His "The Wayward Daughter of Judah the Prince" (2021) was a
sort of a philosopher's "Thelma and Louise" in which the daughter
of Judah the Prince (compiler of The Mishnah--the core section of The
Talmud) runs off with her Christian slave girl lover to measure herself
against the conflicting philosophies of the period.
He writes, "I am grateful to Crystal Field and Theater
for the New City for encouraging me to present this play. TNC is willing
to take on my “comedies of ideas” and these are quite different
from the contemporary obsession with those of jumbled identities and failed
relationships. Kudos to a theater that will buck the mainstream."
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VISIT
THESE WEBSITES OF "ARENDT-HEIDEGGER: A LOVE STORY"
"LUDWIG AND BERTIE: A COMEDY OF IDEAS"
"THE WAYWARD DAUGHTER OF JUDAH THE PRINCE"
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