When most American actors read “Death and the Maiden,” they see a taut little drama that’s part whodunit (or, did-he-do-it?) and part political thriller.
When Flora Diaz reads the play, she sees – she feels – her family’s own personal history.
“I was immediately taken with the play,” says Diaz, on the phone after a long rehearsal for Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s production of “Death and the Maiden,” which runs Jan. 30 to Feb. 11 at the Black Box theater, at Babson College, in Wellesley.
“For me, as a daughter of Uruguayan immigrants, it’s rare that I get the chance to work on a play that represents my own family,” she continues, describing Ariel Dorfman’s 1990 play that explores the psychological fallout for a woman who lived under a repressive dictatorship. “Dorfman captures all the ethical quandaries. He puts it all together in a way that’s incredibly thoughtful, compassionate and intelligent.”
“Death and the Maiden” is the Chilean playwright’s response to Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile in the early 1970s, but Diaz’s parents were enduring something similar in Uruguay in 1973. As the government was being overthrown, it was made clear to Diaz’s mother, Elisa Steinberg, that her name “was on a list,” and she should get out of Uruguay as soon as possible.
All around her, people were being rounded up. It later turned out that some were tortured, others just disappeared. In a panic, Steinberg boarded a plane to Buenos Aries so quickly that she didn’t even have time to tell her husband.
“She said she never felt as much relief as the moment when that plane lifted off for Buenos Aries,” says Diaz. “She was in a hotel room in Argentina on the night of the coup.”
In “Death and the Maiden,” Diaz plays Paulina, and her story is the other, darker side of her mom’s journey: What could have happened to the Elisa Steinbergs who didn’t escape? Paulina was captured and tortured at the hands of a sadistic doctor. The play derives its name from the Schubert quartet that Paulina heard when she was being raped.
At the start of the play, Paulina is living with her husband in a country home. A stranger named Dr. Miranda has assisted Paulina’s husband with a flat tire. When Paulina meets the man, she’s convinced he’s the one who oversaw her torture. The doctor denies it, but Paulina tries to enlist her husband in a plan for a kind of homemade justice that sometimes looks like revenge.
As Diaz lists the complex questions that are raised by the play, she almost can’t stop.
“What is justice? What does it look like?” she asks. “How is it different than revenge? What constitutes torture? What happens when a woman takes charge of a situation like this? How do we heal from mass violence and the damages of war? How do we move forward without forgetting the past? How can people who were tortured find peace?”
At the core of the story are the three characters, searching for uneasy answers in an impossible situation.
“If we do the play right, there will be times when you empathize with each of the three characters, and there will be times when you are disgusted by each of the three characters,” says Diaz. “At times, Paulina’s behavior may seem psychotic. She can be violent and erratic, but she’s not crazy. She’s been subjected to horrors, and she’s doing what she needs to do in order to recover.”
The issues of justice for criminals and recovery from a trauma are additionally significant to Diaz because she describes herself as a “survivor of sexual assault.”
She says her attack occurred at a time of heightened awareness about the issue, and she immediately found a supportive network of services and professionals who guided her through the processes. In her case, the assailant was caught, charged, tried, convicted and sentenced.
All of that made it possible for her to heal.
“I feel so lucky,” she says. “That’s what saved me and allowed me to move on. Some kind of public acknowledgment of what happened to you, and having that on the record, can be incredibly healing. I think of how Paulina doesn’t have any of that support. I can’t imagine how difficult that would be.”
Deep into such a serious conversation, Diaz’s bursts of laughter are a welcome relief. She guffaws when you bring up “Gotham,” the Fox TV show based on Batman’s backstory. Diaz has had a multi-episode run on the series as Detective Campos.
“At the time, she was the only female detective on the show,” says Diaz.
Much of “Gotham” is shot in Brooklyn, where Diaz lives. There are always opportunities for new actors on “Gotham,” because, as Diaz points out, “a lot of people die on that show.”
It’s the juxtaposition of the campy fun of “Gotham” with the grim realities of “Death and the Maiden” that made Diaz laugh. She says working on “Gotham” is “a lot of fun,” but she seems to prefer a project like “Death and the Maiden,” where the villains are real and there is no Batman to save the day.
“I like doing plays that disturb an audience and leave people with questions,” says Diaz. “This one is right up my alley.”