George Bartenieff in Karen Malpede’s “Another Life.” Photo: Ari Mintz.

Karen Malpede’s Another Life will open at the Theater for the New City in late March as part of Theatre Three Collaborative‘s Festival of Conscience, two plays and a series of conversations with a variety of progressive political voices. The centerpiece of the festival, Another Life is a poetic fantasia centering on a Dick Cheney-like mogul played by George Bartenieff. It is one of the very few American plays that directly addresses the subject of political torture in the service of representative democracy under capitalism, and earlier productions have garnered praise from figures such as actress Olympia Dukakis, the Living Theatre’s Judith Malina, and performance artist Penny Arcade.

In addition to Another LIfe, the festival will feature two readings of Malpede’s new play about climate change, Extreme Whether, which is described as “a family drama set on an endangered wilderness estate in an endangered world” and inspired by Ibsen and Chekhov. Along with Bartenieff, the cast for the readings includes Kathleen Chalfant and Zack Grenier. Malpede, on the theatre faculty of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, recently co-edited the collection Acts of War: Iraq & Afghanistan in Seven Plays, published by Northwestern University Press in 2011.

Tickets and information for all these events are now available here. The festival runs 28 March through 21 April; anyone interested in the current state of American political drama will want to attend.