Theatricality of Politics of Violence and New World Order: Death and the Maiden and The New World Order

Abstract

Ariel Dorfman’s play adapts mythological story of ‘death and the maiden’. His ironic dramatization reshapes their fatal relations into the theatricality of politics. Death and the Maiden deals with the aftermath of totalitarian tortures and rapes. Harold Pinter’s The New World Order was a curtain raiser of Death and the Maiden for the premiere in London in 1991. This curtain raiser makes the audiences face the stage of torturing and the fear of identification with the torturer and the tortured. Dorfman tries to mirror the audiences who must have been the death and the maiden in the violent old regime and can be the ironic torturer for the coming new world order. Three characters in Death and the Maiden analogically refer to the power relations: violence and credenda. The audiences play their roles as miranda in the theatricality of real politics. And they signify the theatricality of ironic duals between the raped and the believed-rapist with its social conditions. The events on the stage interweave the past totalitarian politics of torture. Paulina was tortured and raped for a political crime, and is about to verify the real crime of the old regime. She is once again sacrificed herself for the new order, so as to break through the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief in the theatricality of politics.