SPECIAL OPERATIONS play for 3 actors written and directed by McMahon. Workshop production Arizona State University December 2004 featuring John Tang, Marcos Najera, and Walter Shedroff. Presented as staged reading at Son of Semele Ensemble in Los Angeles December 2008.

Special Operations plays with espionage and deception through a dialogue between two men whose identity forms as their alliances shift, as a third man performs military drills around them. Another critical role in the play is played by the unseen Secretary, whose identity shifts partway through the play, throwing into question just who might be the victim of the characters' machinations. The play takes impetus from several contemporary sources; the tapes of Enron executives, the ongoing revelations of imprisonment and abuse in the Iraq war, and revelations about the ideology of the Bush administration, especially in regard to independent “contractors.” The script combines fiction and non-fiction, pulling quotes from journalism as well as extrapolating from statements from politicians. The play examines and holds up to ridicule the idea of "action," specifically the Bush doctrine emphasizing "action" over analysis (and intelligence).

Special Operations requires three live male actors (and one female, one male voice-over), willing to work outside of the boxes of realism and psychological justification. They should have some experience and interest in physical theatre and the absurd, able to work externally as well as internally, and as much with movement, space, time, and shape as with text.

 

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