"Lidless" poster by Win Wallace
February 2, 2009 | Yvonne Lim Wilson
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Guantanamo Bay is once again in the headlines, but now it’s about closing the military prison that has come to represent hypocrisy in human rights and justice.
Local Asian American playwright Francis Ya-Chu Cowhig looks ahead fifteen years later and imagines a scenario where a former Guantanmo detainee confronts one of his American interrogators at her home. He demands half her liver for the damage she wreaked on his body and soul during her interrogations.
In one scene, Ali goes the florist where Alice, the former U.S. Army interrogator works. She doesn't recognize him. He gives her a photo, and explains: “It's a satellite photograph of Guantanamo. Taken a month ago. The base is still there, but the prison's gone. Now it's swimming pools, and palm trees. A maximum security Disney Land. There's a carousel where my cage used to be.”
Playwright Francis Ya-Chu Cowhig took time to talk with Asian Austin about her new play, “Lidless” which runs February 12-14 at 8 p.m. and February 15 at 2 p.m. at UT’s Lab Theatre.
Was there a specific incident or people who inspired this story?
The first thing I started with was a cast size. I like ensemble plays, and I like odd numbers on stage, so I set out to write a play with a cast of five, where each character was integral to the story.
This play was also a reaction against myself and past plays. I was writing something else, something poetic and otherworldly … I wanted to do something much more grounded in some social and political realities.
I began this play in October 2007, when Guantanamo, and the sexual tactics being used by female interrogators, was all over the news. I became interested in this relationship. There is a canon of plays/fiction/film about victims of torture/rape being reunited with their aggressor, generally with the female as victim. This was different.
What was the most challenging aspect for you in writing this play?
For this play, I really had to do what one of my favorite playwrights, Naomi Wallace, calls “Transgressing the Self.” I had to figure out how to become tortured and torturer, and how to explore some messy, ugly things.
A friend of mine was a U.S. Army Medic in Iraq and served in a detention center there. He gave me a red-orange jumpsuit that was the exact kind used for the detainees, and lent me duffel bags full of his army clothing.
Sometimes I would put the jumpsuit in one chair, and an army jacket in another, and look at them while writing. Sometimes I would put on the jumpsuit and write from the perspective of the detainee, then put on the army clothes and write as the interrogator. I tried writing with a bag over my head, at all times of day and night, to find different points of entry into the characters.
What does the title refer to?
LIDLESS is the title of a poem my brother once wrote, about living without eyelids. About being forced to always see what is happening, what you are doing, and never being able to look away. For a lot of their lives the characters in the play are asleep, dreaming, unwittingly or on purpose. During the play they try to wake up.
Does this play also feature Asian or Asian American characters?
Yes. Riva Babani, who in the play was a U.S. Army Medic in Guantanamo, is Iraqi-American, and Assyrian. Ali Abu Muhti, the protagonist who was detained in Guantanamo, is Pakistani-Canadian.
What do you hope people will take away from this play?
The most powerful theatre experience I ever had was one where I couldn't speak for hours afterwards. I just left the theatre and wandered around alone in the snow, letting the play sink into me. One of my teachers at Dell’Arte, Daniel Stein, says that the goal of theatre is to change the way we breathe. Visceral, deep body experiences are what I seek to create in the theatre, and what I hope to give the audience.
This play is still in process. I am on draft twenty of what will likely be about forty or so drafts before the play is in its strongest form, which will probably not be for another year or two. The production in February is the premiere, its first time before an audience, and after getting feedback from the audience and invited respondents, I will go away and do more research and thinking, and after some time away from the play, work to make it a deeper, richer, more embodied/resonant version of itself.
Don’t miss LIDLESS! Admission is free. For more information, visit http://www.finearts.utexas.edu/events/detail.cfm?calset=tad&id=1750.
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