Zayd Dohrn’s ‘Muckrakers’ Is Ripped From His Radical Royalty Bloodline

Weather Underground Scion's Play Is Digital Thriller By Ed Rampell

Published June 10, 2014.

Zayd Dohrns ripped-from-the-headlines Muckrakers is a drama about transparency in the digital age that asks: When does disclosure of the public and personal become too much openness?

The one-act play was inspired in part by Julian Assange and WikiLeaks exposure of Chelsea Mannings Iraq and Afghan war revelations. Assanges alleged sex scandal also informed the plays storyline.

Muckrakers has more twists and turns than a windy seaside road, as renowned British Internet free speech activist Stephen (Darren Keefe) spends the night with anarchistic blogger Mira (Erica Bitton) after a New York speech. All hell breaks loose as the WikiLeaker-type character is out-WikiLeaked in this thought-provoking piece, which is currently having its West Coast premiere.

The playwrights family has an intimate connection to electronic surveillance. In the 1970s, Zayd Dohrns mother Bernardine Dohrn was on the FBIs 10 Most Wanted list along with his father, Bill Ayers, she belonged to the Weather Underground, a group of New Left militants who carried out armed struggle against Washington.

In 2008, they were the so-called domestic terrorists who vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of palling around with. Zayd Dohrn was born in 1977, and then grew up, underground in New York. The dramatist is also a playwriting and screenwriting professor at Northwestern University.

Dohrn, who is arguably the son of a first family of Americas far left, works with a stage outlet that has a lofty lefty lineage, as well as an exalted dramatic pedigree and Jewish roots. Muckrakers is being presented in L.A. by the Harold Clurman Laboratory Theater Company at the Art of Acting Studio, the West Coast branch of Manhattans Stella Adler Studio of Acting.

Dohrn is tall, lean, casually dressed, friendly. During a candid conversation at a Westwood hotel, the playwright opened up about being Jewish, whistleblowers, playwriting, Sarah Palin, Deep Throat, and growing up Dohrn.

Ed Rampell: In what way are you Jewish?

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Zayd Dohrn's 'Muckrakers' Is Ripped From His Radical Royalty Bloodline