Inspired by a true story, Who’s Your Baghdaddy is a satirical musical comedy by Marshall Paillet and A.D. Penedo, based on an unproduced screenplay by J.T. Allen.
Presented as a support group for people who started the Iraq War this dark, boisterous and irreverent story follows a handful of mid-level spies whose vanity and office politics contributed to the worst intelligence blunder in modern history. The show was produced Off-Off Broadway at the Actor’s Temple in 2005 and Off-Broadway at the St Luke’s Theatre in 2017.
The musical is set in a support group meeting for people who believe (or don’t want to believe) that their actions lead to the start of the Iraq War. The story focuses on the recruitment and eventual disgrace of an Iraqi defector, codenamed “Curveball,” and the use and misuse of his testimony by the CIA, State Department, and Bush Administration.
In the show, as in reality, Curveball provides Western intelligence agencies with false intelligence on Iraqi mobile weapons laboratories. This intelligence, which is later discovered to have been fabricated, was used by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his 2003 speech to the UN Security Council to justify the invasion of Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Who’s Your Baghdaddy will be performed and streamed completely live every night for 5 nights. Beaming live from separate rooms, Blake Erickson, Phillip Lowe, Laura Murphy, Matthew Predny, Adam Rennie, Katrina Retallick, Justin Smith and Troy Sussman feature.
