Joe Morton and Sally Murphy Star In BRUTAL IMAGINATION Reading At Lucille Lortel Theatre

Lucille Lortel Theatre will present a benefit reading of the Oppenheimer Award-winning play Brutal Imagination by playwright, poet, and Pulitzer Prize finalist Cornelius Eady. Emmy Award-winner Joe Morton and Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble member Sally Murphy, who both starred in the 2001 premiere at Vineyard Theatre, reunite for this one-night-only event that benefits the Innocence Project. The reading, directed by Morton, will take place on Monday, April 7 at 7pm at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. A talkback will follow. Tickets, which start at $25.

Based on Cornelius Eady's award-winning poetry cycle, Brutal Imagination is a powerful examination of the notorious 1994 incident in which Susan Smith, a white woman in South Carolina, claimed that a Black man had kidnapped her children. The FBI conducted a nationwide search for the man for nine days until Smith confessed that she had invented the Black man and that she had in fact drowned her children. Brutal Imagination, two voices inside one consciousness, brings this invented man to life. 

“We hope this play will continue to be part of discussions in classrooms and living rooms about how we try to imagine what our multicultural future looks like,” says Cornelius Eady. “That to me is the heart of the struggle. And the arts are a vital part of this…you have to imagine it before you can walk into it. If this case had a different sheriff or different police officers…an innocent Black man could have been serving a life sentence or perhaps even been put to death.”