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Reader is a play that requires a very high level of attention from the audience |
For many years we have watched plays that deal with the suffering of those who have become victims of terror, censorship and political repression under the rule of autocratic regimes. In Reader, Ariel Dorfman1 introduces a different dimension to our understanding of state censorship, through the exploration of the character of the censor himself, who is the protagonist of this play.
The play starts when Daniel Lucas, a dedicated and qualified censor, receives a futuristic novel that reveals the mistakes of his own past and the victims he has created throughout his career as a state censor. This novel is about a man called Alfonso Morales, a character who seems to be the exact mirror image of Daniel Lucas. Lucas strives to ban the novel, which talks about what Ariel Dorfman called "the past he cannot hide and the future he cannot avoid". While doing so, and throughout the play, the significant characters in Daniel Lucas's life-his former wife, son, secretary and lover, and the director of the Moral Resources Company-keep alternating with their counterparts in the novel until it becomes very difficult to distinguish the former from the latter; they are actually played by the same actors in the play.
| View two scenes of Reader |
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Ariel Dorfman believes that the roots of repression lie not in the state power of class society, but in a deeper human failing. "Politics in my work is not merely a matter of the state doing terrible things to people, it's people doing terrible things" said Dorfman, "you have to start from the point of view that it's characters, human beings, who have these motivations". Having said that, Ariel Dorfman has created a story that leads the audience to sympathize with Daniel Lucas, as he brings about his own end, despite all the mistakes he has made in his life. The underlying theme in Reader is that "the agent of the state has to confront the terrible truth that if you destroy another human being you will end up destroying your own self as well."
The play is part of "The Resistance Trilogy", which consists of Death and the Maiden, Widows in addition to Reader. Dorfman is a playwright with a message and the three parts of his trilogy explore, in different ways, the minds and bodies of the victims of terror. This play, in particular, has been influenced to a very big extent by Dorfman's own experiences. Dorfman himself has suffered from the censors of the Pinochet regime in Chile who banned his own work and that of many others.
By writing this play, Dorfman takes his own personal experiences to a universal level, in the form of a play that is viewed by spectators from all parts of the world, specially ones who live under similar conditions and where a few officials decide among themselves what the rest of the population are going to read, see and hear. This is why in his script, Dorfman identified the venue where the play takes place as "everywhere", so that one can easily relate to it and think of the characters and the locations as ones that are familiar to them.
In his forward to the play, Ariel Dorfman explicitly expressed his wish that his play be viewed or read by censors around the world, people who would be able to relate to the character of Daniel Lucas and hopefully think more about their own ends. "I have another, more secret, desire", said Dorfman, "Perhaps a hidden censor or two will read this story, will see this play, will buy this book or steal it from a lover's house. Perhaps he will discover, with horror and wonderment, that this is his life; that the truths he has been trying to suppress are irrepressibly alive in these pages I wrote for him and myself and everybody else in the world."
This was the first time for a play by Ariel Dorfman to be staged in Egypt. It was directed by the internationally renowned director John Dillon and staged at The American University in Cairo Theater. The structure of this play is a new and interesting one. The story line is hard to follow, particularly with all the switching between different characters and the confusion of reality and illusion. Therefore, the production of the play has been very difficult and has required the director to integrate all the tools at his disposal-costumes, scenery and lights-to make the story as clear as possible to the audience. The costumes, the movement of the scenery and the mood of the light have illustrated very well the switching of scenes from the life of Daniel Lucas to that of Alfonso Morales. Dillon has managed to create a distinction between the different sets of characters while maintaining a degree of similarity, to show that these changing characters are merely different reflections of the same person.
Finally, Reader is a play that requires a very high level of attention from the audience, to understand the link between different events and the reason behind the way they are arranged. I have been fortunate to watch the play several times and, being a member of the technical crew, attended most of the rehearsals. Personally, every time I watched the play, I found something new that I had not noticed before.
Therefore, if I had been to this play only once, I definitely would not have been able to understand most of the story, and I would have had a hard time understanding the themes of the play. I personally like to watch plays with complicated plot structures and strong effects like Reader; however, a playwright should take into consideration the variety of spectators, their different backgrounds and, accordingly, should make himself as clear as possible.
Here, we are giving you the opportunity to view the play by yourself and have your own opinion. Enjoy it!
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