Privacy: Edward Snowden and Daniel Radcliffe co-star in off-Broadway play

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and actor Daniel Radcliffe will appear together in a play starting on Saturday in New York City.

The show, Privacy, premiered in London in 2014 and has been refashioned for the American theatre. It was inspired by Snowden’s revelations that the US government was conducting mass surveillance on its citizens.

Radcliffe and Snowden ran lines last week to rehearse the show, according to the New York Times, though Radcliffe was in a Manhattan auditorium speaking to Snowden on video from Moscow, where he has lived since June 2013.

Snowden’s appearance in the play at the Public Theater will be confined to a screen as the US government has a warrant out for his arrest, because he leaked confidential NSA documents to journalists, including those at the Guardian.

Snowden and Radcliffe will appear together for about one minute, according to the Times, and only one of the men will be speaking live – the one actually on stage. The dialogue comes at a climactic moment and centers on statements Snowden has made about privacy.

Snowden was not a character in the London staging, though his work was featured in the play, which also draws on dozens of exclusive interviews with journalists, politicians and academics to show the impact of the digital age.

Olivier-nominated playwright James Graham and director Josie Rourke brought the show together as a co-production between the Public and London’s Donmar Warehouse.

They had not been able to reach Snowden ahead of the London premiere but he has become more accessible in recent years thanks to the rolling “Snowbot” that brings a live feed of the whistleblower to events across the world.