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ABOVE: Craig Murray and his wife, Nadira.

Over the Christmas break while I was researching for Fault/Line, I stumbled across the story of Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan.  Stephen Grey’s book Ghost Plane, which was the touchstone of my work on Fault/Line, devoted a whole chapter to the story of the man who uncovered the CIA practice of dropping enemy combatants off in Uzbek prisons to be worked over by a corrupt “justice” system with a legendary reputation for human rights violations.  Mr. Murray openly took the CIA and his own government to task over this practice, and was soon removed from his post.  To this day, he remains a devoted activist and author.

I was so intrigued by this story that I sat down almost immediately to write a short play about it, the title of which came easily: Our Man in Tashkent, the same title given to chapter eight in Grey’s Ghost Plane.  It is the first time I have ever written something really “based on a true story.”  In a little over a week, I will be traveling the 2013 Conference for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) in Orlando to work on the play as part of the New Play Development Workshop, a process which I hope will result in a superior draft of the play and give me an idea as to whether or not this play will have a life in the future.

This opportunity has also given me pause as I reflect on the challenge of writing about something that really happened and about people who really do exist (the play also features Craig’s lover-turned-wife, Nadira, and his wife at the time, Fiona, as well as a fictionalized British bureaucrat who tries to bring the hammer down on Craig).  Back in December, I was so thrilled by the prospect of writing the play that I gave little thought as to what it would actually mean for me, a student playwright, to sit down and try to give an inside look into the life and mind of a living, breathing, enigmatic man as he deals with unspeakable pressure.  Now I find myself somewhat belatedly dealing with the anxiety of trying to this man some justice by acknowledging and respecting the line between fact and fiction.  It’s funny, because this is something I have always been mindful of in the arts, and the bending of facts to make for greater (or at least more streamlined) story-telling is something I have always been very forgiving of; there are higher truths to aspire to after all, right?  Now that I find myself in the same shoes, though, I see that it’s not as straightforward.  There is – and should be, I think – a certain fear when it comes to fabricating elements of a real-life story, even if you really are taking your best guess at what actually happened.  As to the specifics of where one should and should not draw the lines: I have nothing new to offer, but I hope to have a better idea once the ATHE New Play Development Workshop is through.

Of course, I can take some solace – or perhaps some umbrage? – in the fact that Mr. Murray’s tale has already been tackled in the dramatic sphere: David Hare wrote a radio drama that was broadcast on the BBC in 2010 and starred the inimitable David Tennant (yes, that David Tennant) as Mr. Murray, himself.  Here is a link to it on Mr. Murray’s website: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/books/murder-in-samarkand/radio-play/

I will have more thoughts to post as the ATHE New Play Development Workshop unfolds.