Black Elephant Theatre will perform the Chicago premiere of "Terre Haute", by Edmund White at the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport at 8:00pm March 17, 2011. The two person cast features veteran Chicago actor Danne W. Taylor and Cole Simon, making his first appearance with Black Elephant, and is directed by BE artistic director Michael Rashid.
Terre Haute was developed at The Sundance Institute in 2006, made its US premiere at San Francisco's New Conservatory Theatre Center in 2007, performed in New York's 59E59 Theatre, and recently concluded a run at Los Angeles' Blank Theatre. The fast paced 80 minute drama is based on an actual correspondence between Gore Vidal and Timothy McVeigh as McVeigh awaited execution by lethal injection for his part in the April, 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. At the time (pre 911) the bombing was the deadliest act of domestic terrorism ever committed on American soil and launched the most extensive criminal investigation in FBI history. McVeigh, a Gulf War hero with no criminal record, never revealed his true motivations that killed 168 people, including 19 children under the age of six, injured more than 680, and damaged or destroyed 324 buildings within a 16 block radius of the blast. Mr. Vidal concluded McVeigh had acted to avenge what he considered the murder of innocent civilians by the FBI at Waco and Ruby Ridge. In a series of essays published in The Nation magazine, Vidal suggested people like McVeigh should not be dismissed as insane, but viewed rather as freedom fighters against a corrupt government leading the United States into "a perpetual state of war."Videos