I never responded well to authority.
In fact, I never got along with teachers in grade school. Now I know why. It was all an elaborate allegory for fascism.
Brazilian Roberto Athayde wrote “Miss Margarida’s Way” in 1973 when he returned home dead in the middle of the authoritarian atmosphere fostered by the Brazilian Military Government.
Unsurprisingly, the play was quickly banned.
Certainly returning to his home completely inspired Athayde, still a very young man at the time, but the play is much more than an analysis and satire of Latin American fascism in the 1970s. It’s more about power and authority, domination and control in all forms, and it may just kill you from effort, if it doesn’t kill itself first.
Passive entertainment is designed so that the action is separated from the viewer, through the screen of television or the invisible fourth wall of a stage.
Play and movies upset the fourth wall all the time. Usually simple things like characters being aware that they are in a story or addressing the audience directly. They’re mostly quiet jokes of tongue in cheek and aren’t very important.
But not like this.
There are only three credits on the cast for the show. Miss Margarida, (Debi Kierst) a single unnamed student, (Timothy Harland) and the class, which is you, the audience.
You are not just a passive observing entity being referenced. You are a part of the play being encouraged and demanded for response.
This is why the play works so well. The dictator, the sole monologuer, challenges you and your life. You are threatened with passiveness. What holds you back? You are roused to fight back, but you do not for fear of conditions of ridicule or basic edict.
All of these things are challenged.
You are told you have no choice in a play specifically designed to give you choice. Well done.
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The student is planted amongst the audience and before show starts makes his way on stage, phasing through the fourth wall, to place an apple on the teacher’s desk at 8 a.m. sharp.
Miss Margarida enters shortly after a school bell rings with a sweetness that makes your stomach churn and sporting a cross so large it was as if she were Christ himself. She begins by asking if there is anyone named Messiah, Jesus or Holy Ghost in the class. Then she proceeds to draw a huge awkward penis on the white board. It’s very weird.
Miss Maragarida is all over the damn place. She launches into diatribe immediately, going to no lengths towards domination, rule and making you obey.
“Miss Margarida expects you to give me the same respect Miss Margarida gives you,” she coos, a phrase I remember all too well from school that makes me both laugh and grind my teeth.
Choosing a teacher for such a role is important. To control at any level effectively, one requires the control of information. That is why fascists tend to burn libraries almost immediately. In fact, Miss Margarida eventually goes deathly wild in a terrible passion, tearing a book to shreds. There is nothing she will not do.
Thus as a teacher, Miss Margarida has that power to mold and reflect what is lectured in anyway she wishes.
She uses biology to highlight the helplessness of existence in its lack of choice and the vital importance of obedience. You have no choice in being born, Miss Margarida explains, and ultimately you will die.
And many spoke out against her, which I did not expect.
She appears to be completely insane. What does this say? Is it just for the sake of fear? Is power insanity hereditary? She represents so much: government, society, media, religion, family, and of course, school — anything that requires control and uses or abuses power. She is paranoia; she is power, and, dangerously, she is purpose.
Kierst delivers a performance of an overwhelming force. Truly, this is an intense part. Maybe the most intense part ever written for a woman. She is essentially by herself, obliterating the fourth wall, requiring total mastery of not just the script, but of a level of manipulation of the script at will as she faces interruptions and shouts from the audience, all with simply insane energy and vitality in her levels.
During the intermission, once we are finally safe from Miss Margarida wrath, the poor abused student in the audience rises up, encouraging the audience to scrawl graffiti on the white board in defiance of the dictatorship.
“Don’t you want to revolution to succeed?” he asks.
BOX:
“Miss Margarida’s Way”
National Hispanic Cultural Center
1701 4th Street Southwest, Albuquerque, NM
July 22-25, Friday-Sunday
Thursday 7 p.m.
Friday and Saturday at 8p.m.
Sunday at 2p.m.
$12, $10 for seniors, students and National Hispanic Cultural Center& Albuquerque Theater Guild members
