Joshua Casteel
By Mike Dunham

Joshua Casteel was a soldier in Iraq trained as an Arabic linguist and interrogator who had a change of heart while interrogating a jihadist. He requested and received an early discharge from the military as a conscientious objector and, in 2006, received attention for his one-man play, “The Interrogation Room,” on a bill that included Vaclav Havel, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard and Jeremy Irons. The play was widely produced in Europe and America.

Casteel will be in Anchorage for a performance of a new play, “Returns,” in a staged reading directed by Shane Mitchell.

“Returns” is based on e-mails he wrote to friends while on duty in Iraq. According to a press release, the lead character returns from the war “uncertain of the landscape of his interior life,” haunted by images of the war “and by the nonmilitary life and friends he remembers but cannot fully rejoin.”

“Returns,” will be presented at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 29, at Out North, 3800 DeBarr Rd. A question-and-answer session with the author will follow the show, which is free. The presentation is sponsored by Alaska Quarterly Review, which carries the script in its current issue.