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When the tortured finds the torturer
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ONE night in 1973, Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman, then a cultural advisor to president Salvador Allende, escaped death. He was due to work that night, but a friend swapped shifts, not knowing it was the night before a coup by Augusto Pinochet. The coup led to the deaths of thousands, including his friend. Dorfman went into exile.
In 1990, Pinochet stepped down, and “the stark, painful Chilean transition to democracy” as Dorfman described began. This is also a central theme of “Death and the Maiden,” Dorfman’s famous play of the same time.
It premiered at the Royal Court Theater in London in 1991 and received the 1992 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play.
In 1994, Roman Polanski directed a film adaption and now a Chinese version is being staged at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center.
Paulina Salas, a former political prisoner is tortured by memories of when she was raped by her captors, led by a doctor, who played Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” when they attacked her.
Years later, she identifies a stranger who has helped her husband to be the doctor and wants to put him on trial.
In the encounter between the torturer and the tortured, it remains unclear if details are real or a result of paranoia.
“I’m constantly trying to figure out how you can be true to an experience which in fact very few people in the world would understand, such as having most of your friends disappear or be tortured, and at the same time finding a way of telling that story so other people in other places can read their own lives into that,” Dorfman once said. “‘Death and the Maiden’ is the first work in which I finally manage to do that in a way which is entirely satisfying.”
It is directed by Paul Garrington, who directed the Chinese “Mamma Mia.”
Date: Through June 14 (no shows on Mondays)
Admission 150-280 yuan
Venue: Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, D6
Address: 288 Anfu Rd
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