Production History of
WIDOWS
From a poem, to a novel, to a play, Ariel Dorfman's
WIDOWS has gone through many different incarnations and twists and turns
spanning several different languages, editions, and re-writes before arriving at
its current version.
Below you will find the story of the extensive
"odyssey" -- to use the words of the playwright himself -- that
WIDOWS has traveled to come to us in its present form. It is an
important reminder of the blood, sweat, and tears that go into every artistic
creation and a graphic illustration of how precious a work of political
theatre of this magnitude
can be.
THE INSPIRATION.
A native of Argentina, Ariel Dorfman moved to Chile in 1954. A professor
at the University of Chile, he became a cultural advisor to Marxist President
Salvador Allende in 1970. In 1973, General Augusto Pinochet brutally seized
power in a C.I.A.-sponsored military coup that would ultimately prove to be
the most bloody in human history.
Dorfman fled into exile traveling to multiple European countries and
finally settling in Holland in 1976. It was there, one night after
dinner while writing about the death toll in his homeland, where Dorfman
experienced a vision -- "almost a hallucination," he would
later write -- of an old woman by a river holding the hand of a mutilated body
that had just washed up on its shores.
Moved by this image, Dorfman wrote an extensive poem (provided in the
"Playwright's Notes" section of our website) about this woman.
Satisfied, he put down his pen thinking his treatment of his vision was at an
end.
But Dorfman found that his vision would not leave him be. In his own
words: "I could not rid myself of the certainty that there was more,
much more, to her story than what I had written, that in the poem I had merely
grazed the out skin of that pain . . . that she wanted me to go deeper."
THE NOVEL.
So, in the Summer of 1978, he began writing a full length novel already under
the title "Widows." Writing in Spanish, Dorfman was
eager have his story reach the people of Chile so he concocted a very involved
scheme in the hopes of deluding Pinochet's censors into allowing publication
of the book. Working with German Nobel Prize-winner Heinrich Boll -- who
had previously helped Solzhenitzin smuggle his manuscripts out of the Soviet
Union -- Dorfman rewrote the specifics of his novel to make it appear to be a
story of Greek resistance to German Occupation in World War II by a
non-existent Dutch author. But an Argentinean publisher who had
originally agreed to release the book in Chile abruptly withdrew from the
scheme fearing that the Chilean Government would see through the ruse.
No longer needing any pretense, Dorfman re-wrote the novel yet again -- now
in English -- under his own name, though maintaining the setting of the Greek
Resistance in WWII. The novel was published in 1983 to great
acclaim. Once again, the author thought he had completed his artistic
obligations to his vision of the old woman on the riverbank.
THE PLAY.
But then, in 1985, he was contacted by Judy James of the Los Angeles Theatre
The Mark Taper Forum who proposed a stage version of "Widows."
"Then began one of the longest and most arduous creative odysseys of
my existence," Dorfman recalls. After multiple rewrites which
moved the story's setting out of Greece and into a general Latin American
setting, Dorfman collaborated with Bob Egan and the Mark Taper Forum's
Artistic Director Gordon Davidson to craft a stage adaptation.
WIDOWS the Play which made its world-debut at the Hip Pocket Theatre
in Fort Worth, Texas in 1988 starring Rene Auberjenois (famous from his
roles like the film MASH and TV's "Benson," "Deep Space Nine,"
and "Boston Legal") in the role of the
Captain. Later that summer, this version of WIDOWS was also
produced at the Williamstown Theatre Festival under the direction of Kay
Matschullat.
THE RE-WRITES.
In spite of the success of the original stage version -- which also won a New
American Plays Award from the Kennedy Center -- Dorfman felt the play was
incomplete. In 1989 as the Pinochet Dictatorship teetered on the brink
of collapse, Dorfman held a reading of another WIDOWS re-write and was
again unsatisfied. Gordon Davidson suggested that Dorfman collaborate
with a then-unknown young playwright by the name of Tony Kushner (this was
just before Kushner would win the Tony Award for his play ANGELS IN AMERICA).
Their collaboration was successful from the very beginning. "If
I deluded myself into believing that I was the bridge the missing had been
looking for to enter the world and speak to it," Dorfman reflected, "Tony
[Kushner] became in effect the bridge I had been looking for to enter the
world of theatre and reach the U.S. audience which I had found trouble in
connecting to this particular story so removed politically and aesthetically
from the typical American tradition."
And so -- one year after the official return of Democracy to Chile -- the
second version of WIDOWS, co-authored by Kushner, at last made its
debut at the Mark Taper Forum under the direction of Bob Egan in 1991 . . .
only ten days after Dorfman's other play DEATH AND THE MAIDEN began a
very successful run at the Royal Court Theatre in London.
Although Dorfman felt the play was much improved, he still thought it
needed work. When Ian Brown of Edinburgh, Scotland's Traverse Theatre
proposed to mount the play, Dorfman re-wrote the work yet again, without
Kushner, this time adding the character of a narrator. This version of WIDOWS
enjoyed a successful run throughout the U.K. in 1996.
AND NOW...
But the author still saw the need for more work. Re-crafting the play to
eliminate the character of the narrator, Dorfman at last produced a draft of WIDOWS
that he declared "final" in 1997.
This version recently made its New York City debut at the 59E59 Theaters in
January of 2008.
In the play's dedication, Dorfman explains:
"Democracy has returned now to Chile and to so many other countries
where those widows resisted the military and demanded their men back.
Democracy has returned, but many of those women are still waiting for the
return of their fathers, their husbands, their bothers, their sons, many of
them are still waiting for a river or a god to bring those bodies back from
the dead. And the bodies are also waiting, somewhere, are still accusing
the men who murdered them, are still waiting for justice to be done, are still
demanding to be remembered by a society that is all too willing to
forget."
It is to those waiting women, the women who are the hidden and silent
storytellers of this tale that came to me as if in a dream twenty years ago,
it is to them that WIDOWS is finally dedicated."
We at Subversive Theatre are honored to have this
opportunity to present Dorfman's epic work. As you can see from the
information above, this play has gone through an exhaustive journey to come to
us in its current form. We are proudly doing our utmost to do justice to
this incredible work of political theatre and the powerful legacy of the people
to which it is
dedicated.
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