Friday’s tornado warnings, harsh winds and beating rain provided a strangely appropriate backdrop to Starving Artist Productions’ third performance of “Death and the Maiden.” About a dozen people shuffled out of the dismal night and into the cozy Black Box Theater to be spirited miles away from the gusty night and into an isolated beach house in a fictitious Latin American republic.

The story is set in an unnamed Latin American country that is loosely based on the playwright Ariel Dorfman’s homeland of Chile.

The country’s recent dictatorship, which lightly hints at Chilean general Augusto Pinochet, has been replaced with a democratic government, and the play’s main characters find themselves facing dark memories from their time spent under the former regime.

Director and College senior Jim Sarbh’s interpretation of Dorfman’s drama is abstract, beautiful and at times unsettling.

The performance effectively uses sound and lighting to create a completely immersive experience for the audience.

The production alternates between the use of dim lighting and jarring music that manipulates gut emotions, sending the audience leaning in to catch the action one minute and cringing backward the next.

College senior Ashley Schindler delivers an unwaveringly arresting performance as protagonist Paulina Salas that balances brilliantly between steely resolve and perilous fragility. Paulina seeks her own brand of justice in the face of uncertainty; the other two characters weaken and flail under her resolution, their spirits decaying as her determination unfolds. Her perspective is far removed from that of the two male characters. It is a distance also referenced to by the production’s clever decision to offer two different kinds of programs to audience members before the show to augment this divide.

College senior Isaac Fosl-van Wyke, in the role of Paulina’s husband Gerardo Escobar, and Craig Newman (’08C), playing both her antagonizer and her victim Dr. Miranda, offer compelling interpretations of these characters. Newman’s bewildered, exhausted Miranda is a very different sort of character from the evasive and sadistic fascist found in Dorfman’s original play.

The director’s decision on the characters adds an entirely new layer to the tension that would have been otherwise left unexplored had Newman played a more customary Miranda. And Fosl-van Wyke convincingly executes his role as a man divided between the word of his conceivably mad wife and the entreaties of a possibly innocent man in perilous circumstances.

As the play begins, the characters are stiff and affected, their social niceties and lack of candor represented physically by the actors’ masquerade-style masks. But eventually the characters surrender to a confused psychosis, a transition represented by the gradual atrophy of the set, the costumes and eventually the removal of the audience’s seating.

As each scene progresses, the characters’ initially pristine costumes fall away, layer by layer, until they are wearing disheveled and mismatched clothing. Similarly, pieces of the set — walls, doors, windows — also vanish scene by scene.

By the dénouement, the theme of decay in the search of raw and naked truth even dissolves the audience into the play. The line between spectators and performers blurs into a shared space when the audience is moved out of their chairs to sit on the stage with the actors.

The artistry of the play was stunning; however, this impressive show was met by a surprisingly small turn-out. For a $4 student ticket, theater guests were pulled into the twisted mind of a fascinating protagonist and ultimately treated to a performance of truly professional caliber.

“The entire time I was drawn up in knots,” College junior Sarah Wallace said. “I didn’t want it to end but I didn’t want to get any closer to what was going on.”
Wallace has seen pieces of many different productions of “Death and the Maiden” and said Sarbh’s interpretation is one of the best.

“All the actors were very believable,” she said. “And the set and costumes had just enough absurdism in them that really pulled you into the world that is the mind of someone who has gone through so much trauma.”

“Death and the Maiden” is easily among the best student-produced plays this year. It explores complex human emotions and relations, and ultimately leaves the theatergoer with much to mull over.

The performance avoids being a drama in which actors traipse wearily through formulaic plot points. Instead, it becomes an immersive experience for the spectators, who are eventually pulled into the world in a way that defies traditional modes of audience participation and will leave viewers reeling.

— Contact Piper Hale.