2012 – BENGAL TIGER AT THE BAGHDAD ZOO

Soon after the American invasion in 2003, Baghdad is devastated by war. In a zoo of the city, two American Marines must guard a tiger. To kill time, they tell each other their war experience. They actually live the terrible conflict as if it was a bloody videogame.

All the lions of the zoo have escaped. They were sure to reach freedom, but they met death. As soon as they got out of cages, soldiers did not hesitate to shoot and kill all of them. The wise tiger, which has stayed in her prison, remembers her past. She can not understand – and stand – the fact that her main weakness – food – made her fall into an ambush. She ate a tidbit, which was full of sleeping drug. Then she waked up in a zoo.

Tom – one of the two Marines – was in the Saddam’s palace when the American troops broke in after the murder of his sons – Uday and Qusay. Tom took the chance to take possess of some treasures found among the ruins of the huge palace. On the corpse of Saddam’s son Tom found a gun, immediately realizing how precious and original it was. He also took a gold toilet bowl from the ruins of a luxurious bathroom, and buried it. Such a booty will make him a rich man – he already imagines the gains he will get on eBay.

THE PROJECT

Finalist at the Pulitzer Prize last year, Bengal Tiger is the new American work of the brilliant Rajiv Joseph, a wildly funny and visionary work – as the New York Time defined it.
Through this text, Joseph asks us to think of, and feel as adult people, the obscure absurdities in the vision of the chaos who affected Baghdad soon after the Iraq invasion.

Moral questions are quite pressing in our world, as well as the existential mysteries that the mankind had to face through centuries. The role of the main character – the tiger – is made of cleverness and integrity – the animal is the conscience of the game, a wild beat that never slacks off. It is funny, too: a tiger with a silly mouth and a talent for fighting, which through a trivial trap has been shut in the Baghdad zoo for years and complains, showing its pain.

CAST&CREW

Production: Casanova Multimedia
Priduced by: Luca Barbareschi
Subject: Rajiv Joseph