Braeburn School’s 6th formers dared to do the unthinkable and stage an ambitious play like the George Orwell classic, 1984 during these otherwise stressful exam times.
It was as if by producing the play itself, they were acting in defiance of the unwritten rule that during these days, it’s taboo to do anything other than diligently focusing on studying for those sacred exams.
It was our good fortune to be present late last month to see Orwell’s critical novel adapted and transformed into a stage creation that was at least as bone-chilling and worrisome as the novel was and continues to be.
Orwell wrote a disturbing dystopia about what is conceivable in a society that loses a grip on independent thinking and gives itself to a Hitler, a Mussolini, or a Donald Trump.
It’s a world in which a lie is reckoned to be true and vice versa, where ignorance is seen as a strength, good is evil and evil is seen to be good.
It’s a land of Doublethink and Qanon, where surveillance is the order of the day, and people can die for thinking a critically thought about Big Brother.
O'Brian threatens Winston in 1984 at Braeburn School Gitanga Rd. April 6, 2023. PHOTO | MARGARETTA WA GACHERU | NMG
Orwell published his mind-boggling novel in 1949, when 1984 seemed like an eternity away, thus availing societies the opportunity to take the fictional narrative as a cautionary tale that didn’t have to take place if world leaders realized they had to a higher duty to public service than to private self -interest.
But as we have seen, Orwell was prophetic in seeing totalitarianism beingnormalized in many societies.
In the Braeburn dramatization of Orwell’s masterpiece, one man, Winston Smith (Ella Zhao) sees the way Big Brother is surveilling the whole society to ensure dissenting voices are quashed and even silenced for good.
He actually works for the government in a low-level capacity. But by operating slightly below the wire, he is able to see how manipulative and deadly Big Brother’s regime is, and he hates what he sees.
A resistance movement has already begun as we see from the swarm of students shouting ‘Down with Big Brother’. Their movement apparently elicits an aggressive response from Big Bro.
This is where Winston’s work begins, by doing research to find the ones who are different and dissident.
In the case we see, it’s a little girl who has spotted someone with a different kind of shoe and follows him unrelentingly. In school, she has been taught the importance of quashing anyone that is different.
Big Brother has understood the power of teaching children his language of doublespeak and the value of eliminating the individual for the sake of the collective.
The little girl has become such an exceptional student of Doublespeak that she also becomes a devout spy as we shall see at the end of the play.
Another girl who is caught and taken away is first seen laughing at the little girl spy who finds the man with peculiar shoes.
That same girl doesn’t laugh when they come and take her for crying ‘Down with Big Brother’ in her sleep.
Winston is involved in the shoe research, but that’s where we meet him, frustrated and thinking of joining the resistance movement that he’s heard about.
Winston is a dissident surrounded by pseudo-friends Julia and O'Brian in '1984' but both are spies for Big Brother on April 6, 2023. PHOTO | MARGARETTA WA GACHERU | NMG
Somehow, he manages to keep a diary which supposedly nobody reads, but who knows? He also meets the love of his life Julie (Shannon Bell) with whom he shares his secrets.
It’s hard to believe the state doesn’t know about their affair since they are quite open about it. Yet they seem not to be watched.
Eventually, Winston gets called in for his subversive attitude. He initially gets a subtle warning from a cunning character named O’Brian (Abbas Jiwanji) who pretends to be his friend but turns out to be a masterful manager of torture.
The situation changes quickly after that. First, his mother and sister are taken and are never seen again.
After that, Winston’s torture begins. The rest of the play is almost too authentic to be fiction.
Winston is waterboarded and clobbered halfway to death. Ella Zhao as Winston doesn’t have a stuntman to play her character during those excruciating scenes. She deserves accolades for enduring all of that.
Her resilience and ability to stay true to her character (which is also not her gender) are exceptional.
Who else deserves to be acknowledged is the play’s director Daniel Hird since he also adapted Orwell’s opus to the stage for us to appreciate the relevance of 1984 to our present day.
