Filmmaker Debuts Play About Media Failure, Malfeasance In Lawsuit Against Chevron

The play "The 18-Billion Prize" depicts the environmental crusade against Chevron of how a lawsuit turned into the world’s biggest fraud.

NewsBusters - Paul Wilson & Julia A. Seymour 04/05/2018

Photo: NewsBusters

The saga of the environmental crusade against Chevron over pollution in Ecuador will be coming to San Francisco theater this month.

Filmmaker and investigative journalist Phelim McAleer co-wrote the play The 18-Billion Prize, with Jonathan Lear. Broadway World described as a “shocking and at times farcical tale of how an environmental lawsuit turned into the world's biggest fraud.”

According to Broadway World, director Richard Kuhlman see the story as an example of how money corrupts and that the use of verbatim court testimony is what makes the play farcical.

McAleer’s crowdfunded stage play will open in San Francisco May 19, is based on trial and deposition trannoscripts of the court case Donziger vs. Chevron. While Donziger and many media outlets, most notably CBS 60 Minutes portrayed the case as a the little guy [Steve Donziger] fighting for justice on behalf of Ecuadorian natives and Chevron as the big bad business — that wasn’t the whole story.

A U.S. court later found his Ecuadorian court victory demanding $18 billion from the oil company stemmed from fraud, bribery and corruption and blocked enforcement of the judgement within the U.S.

"This new play exposes how environmentalists carried out the world's biggest fraud, how the media helped promote that fraud - and how they almost got away with it,” McAleer said. It will detail and lampoon Donziger and the decades legal battle. He said it will also focus on the “failure of journalism.”