The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller 2011

THE MAN WHO ATE MICHAEL ROCKEFELLER takes a startling and surprisingly humorous, upside-down view of what happens when the Western world intrudes on an ancient, so-called primitive culture, telling the story from the native peoples’ point-of-view: set among the Asmat tribe of New Guinea, the play explores the still-unsolved disappearance in 1961 of Michael C. Rockefeller, the 23-year-old son of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and a celebrated anthropologist who collected artifacts from the Asmat culture during two expeditions there.



The Asmat culture – which developed for thousand of years in isolation before being discovered in the mid-20th century, and whose woodcarving traditions are now world-renowned – expresses its revered, centuries-old spiritual relationship between the living and their dead ancestors in rituals such as head-hunting and cannibalism.



When THE MAN WHO ATE MICHAEL ROCKEFELLER debuted in September, The New York Times selected the play as a “Critic’s Pick” and called it “smart and briskly entertaining,” praising the play’s “excellent cast.” Theater Online called the play “A rare thinking man’s comedy…a sophisticated script…expertly directed.” Backstage wrote, “Fornication can be hilarious…at least it is in THE MAN WHO ATE MICHAEL ROCKEFELLER.”