The Bowdoin Orient

November 10, 2000
VolumeCXXXII, Number 9

Death and the Maiden
premiering this weekend

GYLLIAN CHRISTIANSEN - STAFF WRITER

Bowdoin is such a selfless community. We are constantly being called on to attend, view, and appreciate things in order to support our peers. We go to events, lectures, and performances not to be entertained, but as if they were selfless acts of charity, and that our presence is the only thing holding together the fragile egos of the students.

Well, this Friday or Saturday night, be selfish! Don't go to senior Nina Pinchin's production of Death and the Maiden to support her or any of the other students involved. Go for your own personal enjoyment, education, and enlightenment.

As Cuba week winds to a close here at Bowdoin, Pinchin's production is a fitting reminder of a troubled time in the recent history of another one of our neighbors to the south. Death and the Maiden, a play written by Ariel Dorfman, explores the repercussions of the military coup which took place in Chile between 1973 and 1989 under the rule of General Augusto Pinochet.

While this period of turmoil is one many students will be at least passingly familiar with, the struggle for Chile did not end with Pinochet's regime. Death and the Maiden takes place in the present, and centers around the character of Paulina Escobar, a woman who is still haunted by her time spent in a military detainment camp fifteen years earlier, as played by Sara McLaughlin '03. Craig Giammona '02 is her husband Gerardo Escobar, who has recently been appointed to a commission to investigate the fate of those who, like his wife, were detained. The problem, though, is that the commission can only examine the outcome of those who were not released and effectively disappeared. It can also only publish the crimes, and not in any way implicate the perpetrators. To Paulina, this evasion of justice is an inexcusable compromise, and a source of tension between her and her husband.

On the eve of his appointment, Escobar finds himself stranded with a flat tire, and counts himself lucky to be picked up by a passing stranger, a Dr. Roberto Miranda (John Lockwood '01. When Escobar invites this good Samaritan in for a drink, his wife becomes convinced that this man is the same doctor who tortured and raped her during her detainment. Paulina seizes her opportunity, and takes the doctor and her husband hostage. In an effort to see justice done, and somehow seek retribution for her torture, Paulina puts the doctor on trial, even as her husband grapples with his own loyalties to both his troubled wife and his hopes for the country's future.

What makes the play so compelling is that it bypasses the obvious drama afforded by a bloody and mysterious dictatorship and deals with the emotional scars left on the everyday individuals. For Death and the Maiden, the more important struggle comes after the obvious threat has been eliminated. Paulina's need for justice, her husband's desire to move forward at all costs, and the doctor's role as stand in for an entire administration of terror, all speak to the ongoing turmoil in Chile's future.

Pinchin's production of Death and the Maiden is the result of an independent study, the impetus for which came from her year spent studying abroad.

A fall spent sashaying around London's Theater District wet her appetite for directing a stage production at Bowdoin. But it was spending her spring semester being exposed to "issues of social justice" in Chile that convinced her to take on such a politically-loaded and emotionally-layered play.

" I knew I wanted to direct a Chilean play," said Pinchin, " and Chile's political situation is something that happened, that is happening, with in our lifetime. It was something I felt I should have known more about."

Having seen the film adaptation of Death and the Maiden starring Sigourney Weaver, Pinchin was surprised at how little of the play's rich dialogue was translated into Roman Polanski's production. Even students who have already seen the film should not miss this opportunity to see and hear this play as it was meant to be. Come to Pinchin's production of Death and the Maiden to be challenged, moved, and educated.

And if you like, come to support all the hard work by both the cast and crew that went into making this production happen. Death and the Maiden will be performed at 8 p.m. both Friday and Saturday night in the Wish Theater. Tickets are free and available at the Smith Union information desk.

Sara McLaughlin and Craig Giammona rehearse. (Jane Hummer/Bowdoin Orient).