The aftereffects of psychological damage on people in a country emerging from a totalitarian dictatorship.
Genre
Drama
Setting
Present day; a beach house in Chile
Death and the Maiden (Spanish: La muerte y la doncella) is a 1990 play by Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman. Set in an unspecified country that has recently transitioned from a long dictatorship to a democratic government, it depicts the conflict between a former political prisoner, a doctor who may have tortured her, and her husband who is a lawyer and a member of the investigation commission of the new government. The play was translated into English by the author.
Dorfman had worked as a cultural advisor to Chilean President Salvador Allende during his term in office. After the CIA-supported coup d'état in 1973 and the establishment of Augusto Pinochet's military junta, Dorfman was forced into exile. Pinochet's dictatorship embarked on a campaign of political repression and censorship, with an estimate of 32,000 people tortured, including 3,400 cases of sexual abuse of women.[1] The military dictatorship ended in 1990 and was replaced by a democratic government over a transition period of two years, during which the National Commission of Truth and Reconciliation was formed to investigate human rights abuses occurring during the dictatorship.[2]
Dorfman identified "the stark, painful Chilean transition to democracy" as the play's central theme, and in response to the play's mixed reception in Chile, stated that people "found it not to be allegorical at all, but realistic, and found themselves hurt or wounded by the brutality with which I show their lives".[3]
Synopsis
Paulina Salas is a former political prisoner from an unnamed Latin American country who was raped by her captors, including a sadistic doctor whose face she never saw. During her torture, the doctor played Schubert's String Quartet No. 14, subtitled Death and the Maiden.
Years later, after the repressive regime has fallen, Paulina lives in an isolated country house with her husband, Gerardo Escobar. When Gerardo returns home from a visit to the president, he gets a flat tire and is helped by a stranger named Dr. Miranda. Later that night, Dr. Miranda returns and Paulina recognizes his voice and mannerism as that of her rapist. She takes him captive in order to put him on trial and extract a confession from him.
Gerardo acts as Dr. Miranda's lawyer and attempts to save his life, but after hearing the full story of Paulina's captivity, he formulates a confession with Dr. Miranda based on the specific details Paulina shared with him. Paulina records the entire confession and has Dr. Miranda sign it. She then sends Gerardo to get Dr. Miranda's car so he can go home. While they are alone for the last time, Paulina accuses Dr. Miranda of being unrepentant and guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. She shares that she purposely altered small details of her story when sharing it with Gerardo, and Dr. Miranda corrected those details in his own confession. Although Dr. Miranda denies this, Paulina is completely convinced of his guilt and prepares to execute him.
The play then skips forward in time, and the audience sees Paulina and Gerardo attending a concert. It is never revealed whether Paulina ultimately killed Dr. Miranda. As the concert orchestra begins to play Schubert's Death and the Maiden, Paulina sees Dr. Miranda across the room cast in a "phantasmagoric" light, and the audience is left to wonder whether he is truly there or only in Paulina's mind.
Characters
Paulina Salas – thirty-eight years old
Gerardo Escobar – her husband, a lawyer, around forty-five
Roberto Miranda – a doctor, around fifty
Productions
The world premiere was performed at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 9 July 1991, directed by Lindsay Posner. It had one reading and one workshop production prior to its world premiere.
The Indian premiere of Death and the Maiden (in Hindi translation by Shalini Vatsa) opened at the India Habitat Centre New Delhi on 17 February 2002, produced by Asmita Theatre.
In 2015, Death and the Maiden was staged as a co-production between the Melbourne Theatre Company (18 July – 22 August) and the Sydney Theatre Company (2 September – 17 October). Susie Porter played Paulina with Eugene Gilfedder as the man whose voice might be his undoing.
On 22 March 2024, Death and the Maiden was staged at the Uganda National Cultural Centre (Uganda National Theatre). It was the first theatrical production by Railroad Pictures, a company that had long been invested mainly in film.
An opera based on the play has been composed by Jonas Forssell[sv] with the libretto by Ariel Dorfman. The world premiere was staged at the Malmö Opera on 20 September 2008.
↑Vasallo, Mark (2002). "Truth and Reconciliation Commissions: General Considerations and a Critical Comparison of the Commissions of Chile and El Salvador". The University of Miami Inter-American Law Review. 33 (1): 153–182. ISSN0884-1756. JSTOR40176564.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
