Widows

A smouldering political allegory about a political protest in a country ruled by a military junta. From the author of Death and the Maiden, written in collaboration with Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America.

In a war-torn village the men have disappeared. The women – their mothers, wives, daughters – wait by the river, hope and mourn. Their anguish is unspoken until bruised and broken bodies begin being washed up on the banks and the women defy the military in the only form of protest left to them.

Ariel Dorfman’s play Widows is based on his 1983 novel of the same name. The play was first presented by the Traverse Theatre Company at the Cambridge Arts Theatre in March 1997. (An earlier version of the play was first performed at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in July 1991).

Ariel Dorfman, born in Argentina in 1942, is a Chilean citizen who was forced into exile after the 1973 coup that overthrew Salvador Allende and established General Pinochet as dictator. His numerous books have been translated into over twenty languages. Tony Kushner is an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1993 for his play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Tony Kushner's other plays include A Bright Room Called Day; Hydriotaphia, or The Death of Dr. Brown; The Illusion, adapted from the play by Pierre Corneille; Slavs!; Homebody/Kabul; Caroline, or Change, a musical with composer Jeanine Tesori; The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures; and The Visit, adapted from the play by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. His translations include S. Y. Ansky's The Dybbuk; Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Sezuan and Mother Courage and Her Children; and the libretto for Hans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister's Brundibár, a children's opera for which he wrote a curtain-raiser, But the Giraffe! He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols's film of Angels in America and for Steven Spielberg's Munich and Lincoln. His books include The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present; Brundibar, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon. Among many honours, Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, two Evening Standard Awards, an Olivier Award, an Emmy Award, two Oscar nominations, and the Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.