Word: warded
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...Ward's approach provokes thought, but too often her symbols become stereotypes removed from the realities of the society. The church seems too milk-white, beneficently bestowing its noble goodness on peasants and Guardia alike. The revolutionaries seem too selfish, petulant and shallow. The audience hears the superficial fire of the speeches, but too seldom can see the real fire in the minds of the faithful, whether churchgoers or revolutionaries...
Written by Leverett House senior Bernadette Ward, the play is set in Nicaragua during 1979, when Sandinista rebels struggled to overthrow the dictatorial Somoza regime. Ward tries to dramatize the revolution's impact on a single village and its stock characters: the boyish revolutionaries, the Catholic priest, the young lovers, the disgruntled town elders. But the Guardia National remains off-stage; the abuses and injustice that spawned the revolution appear only as a background for the exploration of the tension between the revolutionaries and the traditions of the church and village...
...foregoing any depiction of the regime's oppression, Ward forces A Time of Fire to rely on second-hand reminiscences of terror, retellings too perfunctory to arouse anger or motivate her characters. The leader of the village insurrection, Rodrigo (William Sakas), is simply introduced as a revolutionary--and the audience learns only later of the seemingly de rigueur murder of his family that sparked his attack on the state. Rodrigo's pat revolutionary rhetoric seems to spring from nowhere, and Sakas lacks the driving intensity that could salvage his character and make it more vivid and commanding...
...Ward aimed to use Rodrigo merely as a symbol, such superficial characterization might suffice. But instead, the play tries to fathom his anguished jealousy of the village priest's power over the villagers, an emotion the audience cannot appreciate fully without understanding why this power means so much to Rodrigo. His apparently pointless anger at times even risks belittling the revolutionary cause and the very real tragedies behind...
George Sommaripa, chairman of Ward Two Democratic Committee, also emphasized the importance of public involvement in taking the "first steps towards peace...