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A staged reading of OBIE Award-winning play “Sleep Deprivation Chamber” about police brutality and its impact on a black family – written by Adam P. Kennedy and Adrienne Kennedy – forms the backdrop for a community discussion of race relations and law enforcement on Mon., Aug. 17, 7 pm. at the Harlem Stage Gatehouse.

In the wake of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates’ arrest in Cambridge and the arrest of 32 black youths on route to a friend’s funeral, the story behind the 1996’s Sleep Deprivation Chamber remains relevant today.  The play recounts one black family's struggle to cope with the vicious beating and wrongful prosecution of its brilliant young son, pulled over for a broken taillight.  Partly autobiographical, the play “exposes ugly truths about the nature of police brutality, and poses questions about what do in the face of such madness.”

After the performance, a panel of experts in civil rights, law enforcement, and cultural criticism will lead a discussion about how pervasive racial profiling affects the lives and liberties of its victims, and how a community can respond.

“Sleep Deprivation Chamber” is co-produced by Patricia McGregor (Co-Founder Angela’s Pulse Projects), and writer Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, in association with Harlem Stage.

“Sleep Deprivation Chamber” is directed by Patricia McGregor.  Cast includes:

• Brandon Victor Dixon (Tony Award nominee, Broadway’s “The Color Purple”);
• Lizan Mitchell ( “John Adams” “Having Our Say” McCarter Theater);
• Kevin Geer (“Twelve Angry Men” Broadway)
• Da'Vine Joy Randolph (“LATE: A Cowboy Story”at Yale Cabaret);
• Eddie Brown (“Passing Strange” at Sundance Theatre Lab);
• Amanda Mason Warren ( “Three Sisters” Classical Theater of Harlem);

Discussion panelists include:

• Chuck Berkeley (ret. NYC policeman, member of “100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care”);
• Damon Hewitt, assistant counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund); and
• writer/cultural critic Greg Tate.

Adrienne Kennedy began her theater career in 1964 with her OBIE Award-winning play, Funnyhouse of a Negro.  Her many plays have been produced, published, anthologized, and taught around the world.  Kennedy has received two Rockefeller grants, a Guggenheim Award, the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Award, and a 1994 award in literature from The American Academy of Arts & Letters.  She was commissioned to write for director Jerome Robbins, the Public Theater, Royal Court Theatre, Lincoln Center, the Mark Taper Forum, and more.  New York’s Signature Theater dedicated its 1995-96 season to Kennedy's work, including the premiere of “Sleep Deprivation Chamber” (dir., Michael Kahn) which won an OBIE Award for Best New American Play.

Adam P. Kennedy, Adrienne’s son who co wrote “Sleep Deprivation Chamber,” is a prolific and accomplished writer and publisher, as well as a TV, film and radio producer.