Posted by eugene williams on March 30, 192003 at 14:29:42:
Night of The Assassins
This is a self-reflective drama in which the concept of revolution and the repressive circumstances that give rise to revolution are dissected and exposed. Triana places the determination for revolutionary change, center stage and through his rehearsal of perspectives, posits the view that opening the door to progressive action necessitates an examination of all of these perspectives. Otherwise the revolution is a perennial stasis and a rehearsal that fails to achieve true adulthood and maturity.
These ideas are worked and reflected through the angst of an insider to revolution. It is, I think, worthy of note that although Triana a participant in the Cuban revolutionary movement, says that he began the play prior to the revolution, it was first performed in 1965, according to Diana Taylor (Theatre and crisis), at a point of ideological shift- during the revolution. This location within the revolution is also reflected in the culminating trial with the revolutionary idealism of the prosecutor: “Can we allow such an individual to share our hopes and ideals at a time when humanity, or rather our society is marching on the resplendent path of progress, heading towards a golden dawn.” (20) In fact the trial towards the end has prophetic resonances, particularly when one considers the anti-revolutionary criticism of the play, directed presumably at its ambiguities. Triana has the prosecutor remark that “ On the other hand the accused denies everything, in an indirect way of course, and seeks to muddle up the chain of events through a cunning combination of sophistries, contradictions, banalities and absurdities.” The playwright no doubt, anticipated these kinds of responses and is indeed suggesting that they need to be brought to trial, ought to be taken into account by the ‘law,’ by concepts of revolution in the outcome ‘ of that path to resplendent progress.’
The performance that Triana requires should not have the artifice of theatricality but rather should represent a reality in the present. Not a derisive commentary, nor a ‘acted’ preparation for the future but presumably a representation of the reality of the Cuban revolution at the time, as well. It is in this context that the premature aging children, would-be assassins/revolutionaries, perform their habituated revenge, repression and a desire for freedom, in their attic of a cobwebbed past. The revolution’s courting of an ideology from another place and time is being held up for scrutiny. None of the three main characters are outsiders looking in. Each of them is an agent of the rebellion being rehearsed: “We each have a part. We agreed.” But they each have a different strength of will. Beba who prefers not to think is a committed follower, while Cuca who is committed to the process would prefer to run away when faced with decisive action to radically change their circumstances. Lalo who is committed to radical change of the old order is also conflicted with the possibility of atrophy of memory and his yearning for familial love. But, whereas the image of change is presented as a mere mechanized reversal of the past “The vase goes on the floor and the ashtray on the chair,” Triana’s treatment of humanistic issues of love, marriage and memories of familial bonding reveals insincerity and romanticized nostalgia. These ambiguities and the collective inner contradictions of the characters, point to the nexus of the play’s discourse, that the real breakthrough to progressive action must engage in. In this regard his landscape of concerns are not just systemic but humanistic as well. He seems to be saying that in order for revolution to mature and grow into adulthood, the entire house and its occupants of perspectives must be taken into account. And so at the behest of rationality and the law, the play culminates in a trial/exposure of stories which are finally shattered by Lalo’s piercing scream and his sobbing collapse into despair which energizes Beba the follower, to lead the action the next time around.
By laying bare from the inside the contradictions of the circle of revolution that seeks to merely remove or reverse contradictions and shift roles and positions, rather than examine them, Triana points to determinations to change as a kind of futility and absurd recurrence that fails, unless it breaks through the morbid core of repression, revenge and stagnant human relationships to real human progress.
Feb 29,2003.