ARTicles vol.4 i.1b: A Note From the Playwright

I write about reality. This is a play about an atrocious event, narrated by a woman without a name who doesn’t just tell the story, but lives through the experience. The piece is written for an actress to represent and transmit the process of living through the experience. It’s closer to a soliloquy than a monologue. But it’s not a soliloquy – because the character doesn’t speak to an audience. Nor is it the representation of a thought, in which the character speaks what she’s thinking silently in her head. No, she speaks out loud, for herself. The piece recognizes the legitimate right that we have to speak aloud, by ourselves; to express the heights of our emotions and the crests of the waves that slam against the tranquil shores of our beaches; and above all, to accept ourselves as ourselves. The piece captures the things that come out of us when we’re alone – the things that escape out of us uncontrolled. Like a sigh, like a scream, like a wail.

Experiencing how violence affects a character as close to death as this plañidera (mourner) is a way of breaking down the iron defenses we build around ourselves – the iron defenses that blind us and desensitize us to an everyday reality that’s full of a whole range of horrific, heartbreaking events. They are events that only affect us emotionally when they involve someone we know, or, in the worst case, someone we love; then it’s brought home, it makes an impression on us, and makes us feel or be truly conscious of the tragedy, of the suffering. And this iron ring, this armor, protects us and takes us to a serene but harsh and desolate world of forgetfulness. When we received the horrifying story of the massacre, we spent a week or two wondering whether we should tell it or not. But we eventually found the inspiration to tell the story in the decision of a woman without a name who lives in a country where things aren’t called by their name, and who lives in a world where forgetfulness moves faster than memory and keeps erasing history. We were inspired by this character; and perhaps by Verse XVII of Jorge Luis Borges’ “Fragments of a Apocryphal Evangelist”: “He (or she) who kills for the sake of justice, or for a cause he believes to be just, isn’t to blame.”

I am both a writer and an actor. And as an actor, I rarely have a strong impact on the content, style, purpose, and ideology of the work I’m involved in. But when we created this piece, we finally had the opportunity to express ourselves freely. And we were able to take advantage of the theatrical space – to create an imaginary space where we could stop time and concentrate on our national tragedy itself, instead of just the discourse surrounding it. And we did it through the live, immediate presence of this woman without a name.

I was born in 1951, three years after “el Bogotazo,”* and I have never seen my country in peace for a single day of my life. I can’t avoid violence. That’s why I write about reality. Each episode narrated by this woman is a confluence of history and geography, written with strict adherence to actual events.

This character’s life is the result of a creative group act. She is, therefore, a work of fiction. The play passed through my hands. And then through the hands of Joe Broderick and Ryan McKittrick, to whom I give heartfelt thanks for their enthusiastic dedication to the English translation. The piece you will see is the result of the work, generosity, and enthusiasm of the American Repertory Theatre; of Alejandro Luna and Nicolás Montero, who steered this ship, this time through new waters; and of course of Marissa Chibas.

I never imagined that this piece would come here. I had no idea that a Colombian play could take this path. And for this I would like to remember Claudia Gómez Morales, my wife, who passed away the year this work premiered in Colombia. She also never dreamed that one day it would be presented on the campus of Harvard, the place where she completed her graduate work in biology. Without her inspiration it would have been impossible to write this play.

– Humberto Dorado, Bogotá, September 2005

* “el Bogotazo”: The day populist Liberal leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was killed. His death was followed by an outbreak of violence.4-14