Word: tania
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Tania rises out of the ashes of another, the struggling spirit of an obscure Russian revolutionary passes through the body of a Latin American guerilla to live on in the unlikely incarnation of a kidnapped American heiress, and the revolution continues. The individual Tanias throw off their bourgeois identities to merge into a greater Tania, a Tania who lives and breathes the revolution...
...such is the message of Maxine Klein's play, which in its structure and in its production reflects the striving towards collectivism that has been a fundamental part of most 20th-century revolutionary movements. Even the program carefully avoids anything resembling star billing. Under the heading. "The Tania Collective," everyone in the production is listed in alphabetical order, their names followed by words like "actor" or "stage manager." Klein's name appears about a quarter of the way down the page, with the explanatory note, "Author, Director." Most of the actors play several different parts, and most of the characters...
...problem is that collectivism may make good revolutions, but it doesn't necessarily make good theater. Even in the revolution there are individuals. Tania gives us too many chants and slogans and not enough character development, too many shining, upraised eyes and not enough genuine emotion. Especially in the overly long first act, the actors subject the audience to rhetorical harangues supposedly broadcast over Radio Havana, speeches that do little to explain the action or the characters. A line like "it is the duty of all revolutionaries to behave as revolutionaries no matter what country they are in" will...
...closest thing to a real character in the play is, of course. Tania, particularly in the second act when her personality receives some relatively extended scrutiny and she is allowed to indulge briefly in what she herself calls "bourgeois introspection." Here we get a glimpse of the fears, the isolation, the stifled doubts that flesh out an otherwise two-dimensional character who always seems to be singing cheerfully about fighting "imperialismo." Working as a spy in Europe and Latin America. Tania adopts a succession of bourgeois identities--including one that she describes as "a cross between Sophia Loren and Minnie...
...when Tania awakes from her nightmare, she is her own self again, or rather non-self. "Dreams...." she scoffs, "what can I do about my dreams? I'll get rid of my fears in them." She has rejoined--at least psychologically--the other characters in the play, all to a certain extent interchangeable, all serving as illustrations of a quotation from Che that is printed in the program: "For the authentic revolutionaries there is no life outside the revolution...