Monday: the Nasty Cold has me in its clutches

But I have a picture from the Sugan "Talking To..." production to add to the blog. This is me as Lady Caroline, a Conservative politician's wife who narrowly escaped death when an IRA bomber -- that's Dafydd Rees playing the bomber ot the other end of the table-- planted expolsives at the Grand Hotel in Brighton where the leaders of the Conserevative Party were gatered for their annual Conference.

More news from the Sugan Theatre

We have scheduled -- at fairly short notice -- a discussion after the performance on Thursday evening (April 6) with 2 people who have extensive experience in talking to terrorists, albeit under very different circumstances -- Raymond Helmick SJ of Boston College and Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe. Brief bios are below.

Please forward this email to anyone who might be interested as we'd like a good turnout.

Raymond Helmick S.J. is Professor of Conflict Resolution in the Department of Theology at Boston College, and is co-founder and Senior Associate in the Conflict Analysis Center, Washington, D.C. For over thirty years he has worked as a mediator in various conflicts, including Northern Ireland, the Lebanon, Kurds of Iraq and Turkey, East Timor, the countries of the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East. He mediated negotiations between the IRA and the Northern Ireland Office during the hunger strike of 1981, and has conducted unofficial diplomacy in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute for decades. He was Associate Director of the Centre for Human Rights and Responsibilities in London, co-founder of the Centre of Concern for Human Dignity (a joint project of the English and Irish Jesuit Provinces). His most recent book is Negotiating Outside the Law: Why Camp David Failed.

Kevin Cullen has been a reporter for The Boston Globe since 1985 and has covered the conflict in Northern Ireland for almost 20 years. He opened the Globe's Dublin bureau in 1997 and was the only staff reporter for an American newspaper to cover the Irish peace process full-time in the year leading up to the Good Friday Agreement. In 1998 he was appointed the Globe's London bureau chief and European correspondent, and spent much of the next three years in the Balkans, covering the war in the former Yugoslavia. Since returning from London, he has covered the fallout from the Sept. 11 attacks, and was a member of the Globe team that won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. Kevin was also part of the Spotlight Team that first exposed the relationship between the Boston FBI and James "Whitey" Bulger.