Public radio from Western Michigan University 102.1 NPR News | 89.9 Classical WMUK
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
0000017c-60f7-de77-ad7e-f3f739cf0000Arts & More airs Fridays at 7:50 a.m. and 4:20 p.m.Theme music: "Like A Beginner Again" by Dan Barry of Seas of Jupiter

Someone's Watching You In "1984"

Sehvilla Mann
/
WMUK

 Crimethink. Doublespeak. Two plus two equals five.

You’ve probably heard at least one of those terms, and you might know they all come from George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Since its publication more than 60 years ago, Orwell’s vision of power run amok has never seemed dated. What A Do Theatre in Springfield will open its fall season with Robert Owens’ stage adaptation. The first performance is October 10th.

The characters of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" live in a fictional state called Oceania. It includes what used to be England. In What A Do Theatre’s production, a disembodied voice speaks to three workers as they arrive at the office.

Attention comrades! This morning three spies confessed to being members of the Goldstein brotherhood of traitors. This afternoon at 1700 hours, they will be hanged in Victory Square. All party members are invited to attend.

The drawn and sickly employees strain to keep up as the voice tells them to exercise. And whoever is talking is also watching.

You, Smith – number 6079 - Comrade Winston Smith – you can do better than that. Your hands are barely reaching your knees. You’re not trying.

What a Do Theatre Executive Artistic Director Randy Wolfe says "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is just the right play to open the fall season. For one thing, it pairs well with Halloween.

“Our concept of this show has been suspense, action-adventure which is basically what it is. It’s very eerie, it’s very – it has a very creepy feel to it, a very suspenseful vibe as well.”

But Wolfe says he also chose the play for its message about the prying eyes of governments and corporations.

That includes “Current issues such as what’s going on with NSA, the current problems with the Secret Service, common-day everythings like Facebook, Google. Everything is relevant to Big Brother,” he says.

Credit Sehvilla Mann / WMUK
/
WMUK
Joe Dely as Winston Smith, right, and Kristin Stelter as Julia.

Big Brother is the supposed leader of Oceania. He’s always watching, people are told, even though they never see him. Protagonist Winston Smith does not love Big Brother, and he worries it shows. When a young woman named Julia is transferred to his office, Winston thinks she’s been sent to spy on him.

Winston: I’ve seen you before, comrade.

Julia: What of it? I’ve seen you. We both work in the same building.

Winston: But we do not live in the same building. I’ve seen you in the street outside my apartment. Why?

Julia: I’m not here to be cross-examined, comrade. I’m here to do a job.

It turns out Julia does have a double agenda: She likes Winston. Unfortunately, relationships are not allowed.

Joe Dely, who plays Winston Smith, says the scenes of violence in the play might be the hardest on viewers.  But they're not necessarily the toughest ones to act.

“When you play an emotion that’s that extreme, you either go full out or you don’t go there at all. So I’d say the more challenging material is the philosophical stuff in the beginning, and the subtle things that help make the show suspenseful,” he says.

“There’s a certain feeling or emotion that comes with being watched all the time,” says Kristin Stelter, who plays Julia in What A Do’s production.

She says she has to work to get into that mindset.

“Somebody’s watching you brush your teeth every morning and get changed and get dressed. And you know, somebody is just watching you walk down the street. And how does that inform your movements, how does that inform how you react to other people and relationships? Do you form relationships?”

And the audience will be watched too. It starts at the box office, where guards will “allow” people to buy tickets.

“We have two cameras, one on either side of the stage that will be moving throughout the show, so the audience feels the pressure of being watched the same as the actors,” Wolfe says.

 

Sehvilla Mann joined WMUK’s news team in 2014 as a reporter on the local government and education beats. She covered those topics and more in eight years of reporting for the Station, before becoming news director in 2022.
Related Content