Another Glorious Day (2009)

Centered around a 2008 revival of The Brig, the inflammatory 1963 play that exposed the harsh realities inside a US Marine prison, this documentary by Karin Kaper and Dirk Szuszies puts former Marine Kenneth H. Brown's drama into historical perspective - and makes a case for its ongoing relevance - through powerful scenes from the recent production in Berlin as well as illuminating interviews with directors of the play past and present, revival cast members, and the playwright himself. When Julian Beck and Judith Malina, the founders of New York's radical Living Theater, brought The Brig to their stage in the early 1960s, many theater critics - not to mention the US Department of Defense - found it not just obnoxious but subversive. Rooted in the surrealist model of Theater of Cruelty, Brown's claustrophobic vision of young, caged Marines being transformed into automatons - performing a kind of foot-stamping ballet at double-time as they're verbally abused and punched in the gut by their guards - outraged many and stirred others to antiwar action. More than four decades later, with Americans again on the battlefield, the play still strikes raw nerves. One of the young cast members, explaining how violently it changes shape with each performance, admits, "I'm under psychic stress for two hours."