Confronting torture

Altera Vitae theatre links a dark history to
current events with Death and the Maiden

SHE WANTS REVENGE: Fe and Croitoru

By NEIL BOYCE

Jesse Corbeil is back at the helm after directing Altera Vitae’s great inaugural production, ‘night Mother, and company founder Carolyn Fe has picked a modern classic for their third show, Ariel Dorfman’s 1990 drama, Death and the Maiden.

It’s a tightly-wound story with a novel setting. examining a society in the process of remaking itself.

Set in an unnamed country after the fall of a fascist government, a woman gets the chance to confront the man who might have been her torturer. The place and its brutal past is, as Dorfman describes it, “a country that is probably Chile but could be any country that has just given itself a democratic government after a long period of dictatorship.”

Gerardo Escobar (William Ward) has been chosen to head a commission to investigate crimes of the old regime. When his car breaks down, the benevolent Doctor Miranda (Sam Croitoru) gives him a lift home. But Gerardo’s wife, Paulina (Carolyn Fe), thinks she recognizes another man—the one who raped and tortured her as she lay blindfolded in a military detention centre years before. She points a gun at her guest and decides to find out the truth.

“The themes are still very fresh today. Torture and the presumption of guilt are everywhere,” Corbeil says. “And habeas corpus is becoming nothing more than a notion.”

Viewers of Roman Polanski’s film adaptation should know that Dorfman’s play is far more murky about Miranda’s true identity. For Dorfman, an Argentinean writer who made Chile his home until its military coup, the later “reformed” life of a state-sponsored torturer was less interesting than the result of his actions on the survivors.

A reluctant interviewee, Croitoru plays his cards close to the chest when talks about his character, the enigmatic doctor. “He’d been through rough times, and did what he had to to get through, like everyone else. What, exactly he did, I’m not telling you.”

Regarding Paulina, he adds, “Her assumptions are based on memory—the imprints of her experience—and I’ve become the whipping boy since I’m the closest thing to that experience she’s come across. I’m like an innocent victim.”

“We have to trust everything she says,” Croitoru continues, “but she can think what she wants. The important thing is to leave people with the question unanswered—or the ambiguity of the answer.”

With each new production, Altera Vitae partners itself with an organization whose mandate is similar to themes in the play. Death and the Maiden will highlight RIVO (web.net/~rivo), a network of therapists and community workers concerned with the well-being of survivors of torture and other forms of political violence.

Growing up Cambodian

For Asian Heritage Month, another new voice on the Montreal anglo theatre scene, Apsara Theatre, presents Someone Between.

Founded by Chantria Tram and Milena Buziak to produce multi- and intercultural work, Apsara Theatre presents this one-woman show about a young Cambodian-Canadian grappling with her traditional Khmer upbringing and her new home in Canada.

Having escaped the turmoil of Cambodia, a young girl and her family find themselves in Canada. As a new immigrant, she faced not only with the normal challenges of growing up, but with traditional parents who want her to be “a perfect Cambodian daughter.”

DEATH AND THE MAIDEN, MAY 13–24
AT MAINLINE THEATRE (3997
ST-LAURENT). INFO: (514) 849-3378
SOMEONE BETWEEN MAY 15–17 MONUMENT
NATIONAL (1182 ST-LAURENT).
INFO: (514) 871-2224