My show and tell play this round is Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo by, Rajiv Joseph. It was written in
the early 2000’s and was produced for the first time at Kirk Douglas Theatre in
Culvar, California in 2009. It quickly made its way onto many more stages
including Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre, and was honored with the
outstanding New American Play award in 2008. I would consider this a play worth
reading, I was impressed with the abrupt plot changes, and the way Joseph was
able to incorporate the lines of the ghosts so congenially.
This play takes place in several different locations in
Baghdad in 2003. In the first scene, American soldiers Kev and Tom guard the
zoo, which is the home of the plays protagonist, the tiger. Tom took part in
murdering Uday Hussein and cares only to regain possession of the golden gun
and toilet he stole from him. Unfortunately, the tiger bites off Tom’s hand in
the very beginning making that a difficult task to complete. Kev kills the
tiger for eating Tom’s hand, and is actively haunted by him for the rest of the
play, turning Kev entirely lucid and eventually sending him to the loony bin.
Tom hires a translator named Musa who ends up connecting all the characters in
the play. Musa has a loyalty to Uday, even though he raped and abused his
little sister Nadia before his death. However, he is still employed by Tom and
haunted by the ghost of Uday and his cowardice choices. The interactions
between the living characters and the ghosts form the skeleton of this plot.
The twists and discoveries come from inescapable and ever-changing fates that
keep the characters in constant pursuit of one another, until there is nothing
left.
This play is written from the perspective of many characters
all branching from 1 of 3 worlds. There is the world of the tiger as an animal,
there is the world of the living characters as humans, and there is a world of
the dead characters that still linger and can affect the outcome of the given
plot. This is something you realize once you start reading because the script
flows quickly with no indication of who is talking to who or who can hear who,
from the author. There is so much Joseph wants his audience to recognize and
follow in such a short play, that its imperative for the reader to be able to
connect with and bounce back and forth with from different perspectives,
worlds, and lines of communication without getting lost. His choice to write
the lines straight though with no side notes was clearly done in order to help
us view the story the way he intended. Another choice that stood out to me was
how powerful the ghosts were in regards to their affect on the other
characters. Normally, one would assume the ghosts had no actual control because
they weren’t alive, therefore, I believe Joseph wrote their actions to have
consequences for a reason. The theme and message of this play has a lot to do
with mind control; with how easy it is to loose, yet how necessary it is to
have. Joseph uses the uncanny ability of the ghosts to control the characters
and significantly manipulate their futures to reveal how the fragility of ones
own mind. This choice reiterates the unifying principle of this piece and
leaves the audience overtly aware of the power of the mind.
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