Harlequin Productions presents the regional premiere of Is This a Room, the verbatim FBI transcript of the arrest of NSA whistleblower Reality Winner, March 7 – 23, 2025 at the State Theater. Original concept and direction by Tina Satter. Producing Artistic Director Aaron Lamb will direct.
A true story, still unfolding. June 3, 2017. A 25-year-old former Air Force linguist named Reality Winner is surprised at her home by the FBI, interrogated, and then charged.
The verbatim FBI transcript of her interrogation is the heart of Is This a Room, conceived as a play by Obie Award-winner Tina Satter, in which an extraordinary human drama unfolds between the complex and witty Reality, and the agents who question her. As Reality’s autonomy shrinks before her eyes, a simmering real-life thriller emerges, asking what it is to have honor in this American moment, and how the personal can reverberate globally.
In an interview with NBC News before the Broadway production, director Tina Satter said she discovered the transcript via a link in a December 2017 New York Magazine article about Winner. The transcript reads like a taut thriller, chronicling every breath in the 75-minute period between the moment two FBI agents first meet Winner outside her home, to the moment they turn off their recorder after her arrest. Says Director Aaron Lamb, “In reading the transcript I was struck with how perfectly it was shaped like a piece of theatre.”
The production deliberately does not take a side to the rightness or wrongness of Winner’s actions. Experiencing a real event, as it really happened, lets audiences decide for themselves what to feel. Per Lamb, “In the tribal, bifurcated world of social media reactions and of political left v. right and red v. blue we choose sides rather than considering the issues…What theatre uniquely requires of us is a commitment to sharing space and time with each other. We have to sit in something together, and we have to let it unfold and sink in. Reality Winner did break the law. It’s up to you to decide how you feel about that.”
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Production Information
WHAT: Harlequin Productions presents the regional premiere of Is This a Room, the verbatim FBI transcript of the arrest of NSA whistleblower Reality Winner conceived by Tina Satter, directed by Aaron Lamb.
WHEN: March 7-23, 2025
WHERE: State Theater, 202 4th Ave East, Olympia, WA 98501
TICKETS: Tickets are available online at harlequinproductions.org, by phone at 360-786-0151, or in person 12-5:30 pm, Tuesday-Saturday at the State Theater Box Office, 202 4th Ave E.
SPECIAL DATES FOR THE AUDIENCE:
Opening Night: Friday, March 7 at 7:30 pm
Pay-What-You-Can: TBA prior to Opening
Closing: Sunday, March 23 at 2:00pm
CATEGORY: Thriller
AGE RECOMMENDATION: 11 and older with guidance for mature situations
Harlequin Productions is a professional not-for-profit theater company in Olympia, WA. We seek to invigorate, educate, and empower our community and all people to feel more, think more, play more, and judge less through the mirror of real live theatre.
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