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College Theatre Presents

Adapted by Robert Owens, Wilton E. Hall Jr. and William A. Miles Jr.

From the novel by George Orwell.

Directed by Amelia Barrett

McAninch Arts Center

Playhouse Theatre April 4 -14, 2019

Presented by arrangement with The Dramatic Publishing Company

Special Thanks to Anthony Venezia and the Motion Picture and Film Department for their assistance in the Video Segments within the production

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Summary

Based on the iconic novel by George Orwell, 1984 brings us the story of Winston Smith, a cog in the giant machine state of Oceania. Under the omnipresent eye of Big Brother, Winston defies a ban on individuality, struggling for scraps of love and freedom in a world flooded with distrust and violence. Adult Themes and language.

Preview: Thursday, April 4, 2019 Pre-show discussion with director and designers: Thursday, April 4 at 6:45 p.m. Post-show discussion with director, actors and crew: Friday, April 11, 2019

Time: A dystopian society in the not so distant future.

Place: Various locations in Oceania

Act One

Scene One: The Ministry of Truth. Morning.

Scene Two: Winston’s apartment. Months later.

Act Two

Scene One: A rented room. A week later. Intermission

Scene Two: O’Brien’s apartment. Weeks later.

Scene Three: The rented room. Weeks Later.

Act Three

Scene One: A cell in the ministry of Love. Immediately following.

Scene Two: The Ministry of Love, Room #101. Months later.

Scene Three: The Chestnut Tree Café. Year later.

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Character List Winston Smith - A minor member of the ruling Party in the near future, Winston Smith is a thin, frail, contemplative intellectual. Winston hates the totalitarian control and enforced repression of his government. He harbors revolutionary dreams.

Julia - Winston’s lover, a beautiful dark-haired girl working in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. Her rebellion against the Party is small and personal, in contrast to Winston’s ideological motivation.

O’Brien - A mysterious, powerful, and sophisticated member of the Inner Party whom Winston believes is also a member of the Brotherhood, the legendary group of anti-Party rebels.

Big Brother - Big Brother, the perceived ruler of Oceania, is an extremely important figure. Everywhere Winston looks he sees images of Big Brother. Big Brother’s image is stamped on coins and broadcast on the unavoidable telescreen; it haunts Winston’s life and fills him with hatred and fascination.

Landlady - An old woman who runs a secondhand store in the prole district. Kindly and encouraging, she seems to share Winston’s interest in the past. She also seems to support Winston’s rebellion against the Party and his relationship with Julia, since she rents Winston a room without a telescreen in which to carry out his affair.

Syme - An intelligent woman who works with Winston at the Ministry of Truth. Syme specializes in language. As the play opens, she is working on a new edition of the Newspeak dictionary.

Parsons - An obnoxious Party member who lives across from Winston and works at the Ministry of Truth. She has an ill-tempered child named Gladys who is a member of the Junior Spies.

Emmanuel Goldstein - According to the Party, Goldstein is the legendary leader of the Brotherhood. He seems to have been a Party leader who fell out of favor with the regime. In any case, the Party describes him as the most dangerous and treacherous man in Oceania.

Director’s Note In my mind, Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning. It was his visceral response to the rise of fascism and the expansion of communism in 1948, warning of a time where these powers would take hold of society. Orwell’s ideas ask us to remain heedful to the “truth” we are influenced by through political language rather than force. Once these forces control language, they control thought; once free thought is controlled, we are lost. “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” ~AB

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The Novelist The following is taken in its entirety from Danielle Graves, Luke Howe-Kerr, Ryan Johnson, and Sean Patterson’s “George Orwell’s 1984.”

“George Orwell, or Eric Blair, was an English writer who lived from 1903-1950. He is commonly known as one on the best English writers of the 20th century and the most important chronicler of English culture in his generation, with his work still impacting pop culture today. His books are described as showing awareness of social injustice and opposition to totalitarianism, especially through his last and most popular work, 1984.

On June 25 of 1903, Eric Arthur Blair was born in Motihari, Bengal India. His father Richard worked for the Indian Civil Service and his mother Ida cared for him and his two sisters, Marjorie and Avril. After Eric’s first birthday, he and his mother moved to England, with his father joining in 1912. At five years old, Eric entered the Henley-on-Thames parish school, learning for two years before attending St. Cyprian’s in Sussex. Eric then earned a scholarship to one of the best schools in England, Eton College, where he studied between 1917 and 1921. During these early school years, Eric was often disciplined with corporal punishment and this might be where he first develops his resentment towards authority.

In 1922, Eric decided to join the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, where he spent the next five years. During this time, he became known as an outsider, keeping to himself and developing resentment towards the oppression created by imperialism. He also grew to love the Burmese and decided to resign and become a writer. After Burma, Eric moved to Paris to try writing short stories. He wrote freelance periodicals going by many times as the name ‘Hotel X’, although he did not make very much money. In 1929, he moved back the England in East London after a brief bout of pneumonia.

Eric soon adopted his pseudonym George Orwell, before publishing Down and Out in Paris and London, his tales of living in the city and living like a beggar. After seeing what life was like for the lower class, he wanted to write for the common man and became a proponent for socialism. He started to go tramping through London, or roaming the streets with beggars and thieves, without nice clothes or a place to stay. He got a chance to see the disparity between the classes and learned poverty. He lived a very solitary life, which is seen in Winston in 1984. In 1932, Blair was a teacher before going to work at a bookstore in Hampstead. A Clergyman’s Daughter was published in 1935, a book based on his teaching days. In 1936, Eric and his student Eileen O’Shaughnessy married. The couple could not have children, so they eventually adopted a son in 1944 named Richard Horatio. This also is a character trait of Winston in 1984 [being childless].

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The Spanish Civil War was a very important part of Eric’s life. Eric left and fought for the Spanish government against the nationalist uprising. He fought hard on the front lines of Barcelona. At one point, he was shot in the throat by a sniper bullet, and was declared unfit for service. Eric and his wife had to escape from Spain by train. This is because the group he was fighting with was going up against the fascists, but a rumor said that indeed his group was the fascists. They returned home to England, but Blair was a changed man. He saw what the communists had done and had a new spite for all communism and totalitarianism that would later influence his book 1984.

Back in England, Eric went back to freelance writing for New English Weekly, The Tribune, and New Statesman. Eric also was a broadcaster with BBC in propaganda ef- forts to gain support from Asia. The information was of- ten distorted, and so he quit, outraged, and later expressed his outrage by including the manipulation of facts very

prominently in his novel, 1984. His wife, Eileen, died on March 29, 1945 during surgery. Blair moved to the Isle of Jura for a year, publishing another famous book, Animal Farm. Once again back in England, Eric was admitted to Cotswolds’ Sanatorium for tuberculosis in 1949. The same year he married Sonia Bronwell. While he was sick, he was busy finishing his last and most famous novel, 1984. It was finally published in 1949, receiving mixed reviews. Right after the New Year in 1950, Eric Blair suddenly died on January 21 at the age of 46 of the tuberculosis he had been battling for the past three years. He is buried in the All Saint’s Churchyard in Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire, England.

Historical Background Written in 1949, George Orwell's 1984 was heavily influenced by the political climate during his life, especially through the examples of totalitarianism that were emerging throughout Europe and the world. Understanding the environment in which a person grows up provides a lot of in- sight into their opinions and state of mind, both of which are expressed in their writing. George Orwell's life especially is influenced by political climate because of his work as a journalist and his involvement with the Burmese Police. The 1940's was a very turbulent time, with everyone's lives, including George Orwell's, being impacted by World War Two. World War Two itself was a titanic power struggle between the principles of totalitarianism and socialism and the powers of democracy. The following links delve into the importance of the historical context of the novel from general background information to essays written by Orwell himself.

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General Background Both the History Channel and Spark Notes provide some general pertinent information about 1984 in the context of George Orwell's life. Both articles provide a brief biography of his life and discuss how significant events, from Orwell's time spent in Burma to his time spent in the Spanish Civil War, affected different aspects of 1984. Throughout his life, Orwell has served very active roles wherever he has lived. In Burma, he served as a member of the brutal British Imperial Police. Both his role there and his role in the Spanish Civil War, where he witnessed first-hand the atrocities committed by fascist dictatorships, infuriated him, so he focused his views and his anger into his writing. As the articles explain, these views manifested in his books, including both Animal Farm and 1984.

The 1940's The following websites provide some background information regarding World War II and the political, social, and economic changes that it inspired. George Orwell lived in England; he lived in close proximity to the war front and, at one point in his life, even combated Italian socialism himself. As an author, Orwell took ideas and events in his own life and molded them into his stories, so, aspects of the political climate of the 1940's were present in his books. The rise of totalitarianism that is very evident in 1984 is a strong example of this. Thus, in order to get a full grasp of the themes in 1984, it is extremely important to have some background knowledge about the 1940’s.

http://history.howstuffworks.com/world-war-ii/economic-and-social-aspects-of-world-war- ii4.htm http://history1900s.about.com/od/timelines/tp/1940timeline.htm http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005249.html

Orwell's Writing In addition to the inferences we can make based on the circumstances surrounding Orwell's life, we can also gain a deeper understanding of 1984 by reading some of the essays and letters writ- ten by Orwell himself. Orwell wrote one general essay about his reasons for writing as well as a letter specifically about his reasons for writing 1984. After all, nothing is more helpful for under- standing the context of a novel than insight from the author.

In 1946, George Orwell published an essay that delves into the four main motivations of writers in general, but also sheds insight into the various reasons that he began writing. Although this essay does not specifically talk about the development of 1984, he does discuss where he draws his inspiration for various other novels. Understanding how a writer thinks as well as where they draw their insight from is key in fully understanding and analyzing their many different works.

On May 18, 1944, George Orwell wrote a letter to a colleague of his describing in-depth the various reasons for the development of specifically 1984. The letter especially focuses on Orwell’s

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opinions of the world politics landscape at the time the letter was written. Orwell investigates the structures of governments such as Britain and the USA as well as the interaction between world powers, for both good and bad impacts. Each of the topics discussed eventually had a profound effect on the making of 1984.” 1

“I must say I believe, or fear, that taking the world as a whole these things are on the increase. Hitler, no doubt, will soon disappear, but only at the expense of strengthening (a) Stalin, (b) the Anglo-American millionaires and (c) all sorts of petty fuhrers of the type of de Gaulle. All the national movements everywhere, even those that originate in resistance to German domination, seem to take non-democratic forms, to group themselves round some superhuman fuhrer (Hitler, Stalin, Salazar, Franco, Gandhi, De Valera are all varying examples) and to adopt the theory that the end justifies the means. Everywhere the world movement seems to be in the direction of centralised economies which can be made to ‘work’ in an economic sense but which are not de- mocratically organised and which tend to establish a caste system. With this go the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer. Already history has in a sense ceased to exist, ie. there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as military necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark. Hitler can say that the Jews started the war, and if he sur- vives that will become official history. He can’t say that two and two are five, because for the purposes of, say, ballistics they have to make four. But if the sort of world that I am afraid of ar- rives, a world of two or three great superstates which are unable to conquer one another, two and two could become five if the fuhrer wished it. That, so far as I can see, is the direction in which we are actually moving, though, of course, the process is reversible.

As to the comparative immunity of Britain and the USA. Whatever the pacifists etc. may say, we have not gone totalitarian yet and this is a very hopeful symptom. I believe very deeply, as I ex- plained in my book The Lion and the Unicorn, in the English people and in their capacity to cen- tralise their economy without destroying freedom in doing so. But one must remember that Britain and the USA haven’t been really tried, they haven’t known defeat or severe suffering, and there are some bad symptoms to balance the good ones. To begin with there is the general indif- ference to the decay of democracy. Do you realise, for instance, that no one in England under 26 now has a vote and that so far as one can see the great mass of people of that age don’t give a damn for this? Secondly there is the fact that the intellectuals are more totalitarian in outlook than the common people. On the whole the English intelligentsia have opposed Hitler, but only at the price of accepting Stalin. Most of them are perfectly ready for dictatorial methods, secret po- lice, systematic falsification of history etc. so long as they feel that it is on ‘our’ side. Indeed the statement that we haven’t a Fascist movement in England largely means that the young, at this moment, look for their fuhrer elsewhere. One can’t be sure that that won’t change, nor can one be sure that the common people won’t think ten years hence as the intellectuals do now. I hope they

1 Graves, Danielle, Howe-Kerr, Luke, Johnson, Ryan, and Patterson, Sean. “George Orwell’s 1984.” https://dmhs1984blockw1group2.weebly.com/. Mar 1, 2019.

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won’t, I even trust they won’t, but if so it will be at the cost of a struggle. If one simply proclaims that all is for the best and doesn’t point to the sinister symptoms, one is merely helping to bring totalitarianism nearer.

You also ask, if I think the world tendency is towards Fascism, why do I support the war. It is a choice of evils—I fancy nearly every war is that. I know enough of British imperialism not to like it, but I would support it against Nazism or Japanese imperialism, as the lesser evil. Similarly I would support the USSR against Germany because I think the USSR cannot altogether escape its past and retains enough of the original ideas of the Revolution to make it a more hopeful phe- nomenon than Nazi Germany. I think, and have thought ever since the war began, in 1936 or thereabouts, that our cause is the better, but we have to keep on making it the better, which in- volves constant criticism.

Yours sincerely, Geo. Orwell

Three years later, Orwell would write 1984. Two years after that, it would see publication and go on to generations of attention as perhaps the most eloquent fictional statement against a world reduced to superstates, saturated with ‘emotional nationalism,’ acquiescent to ‘dictatorial meth- ods, secret police,’ and the systematic falsification of history,’ and shot through by the willing- ness to ‘disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible fuhrer’.” 2

A Conflicted Text

Roger Luckhurst writes “1984, the product of 1948, carries all the pessimism associated with the geo-political forces of the new post-war dispensation: England reduced to ‘Airstrip One’, ground up between larger powers, a nation bankrupted by war, in hock to the American banks and forced to break up its Empire. Interestingly, Orwell’s exaggerated vision of his present bears no trace of the transformative post-war Labour Party, then in power openly as democratic socialists involved in the process of constructing the armatures of the welfare state.

Yet despite its reputation as a rather undialectical dystopia, full of unrelieved despair, 1984 does always seem very interested in the resources of human resistance. In the first part, Orwell invokes the power of private memory to resist the state’s rewriting of history and explores the re- serve of the unconscious (Winston is always dreaming, dreams woven out of personal memory).

2 “George Orwell Explains in a Revealing 1944 Letter Why He’d Write 1984.” Open Culture. History, Literatrue. Jauary 9, 2014. http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/george-orwell-explains-in-a- revealing-1944-letter-why-hed-write-1984.html. Web. 5 January, 2019.

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He explores the resistant potential of desire and sexuality, described as ‘the force that would tear the Party to shreds’, and of purposeless art, represented by the useless beauty of the paperweight he cherishes that embodies ‘a little chunk of history they had forgotten to alter’. These are all systematically dismantled by the Party’s reprogramming in the closing chapters of the book, of course. Yet even if 1984 appears to have no interest in the proletariat as an agent of history in the resistance to totalitarianism, the book’s exploration of the power of memory, art, sexuality and the unconscious points the way ahead to new kinds of leftist cultural criticism that would emerge 20 or 30 years later. 1984 can be recruited to bland accounts of triumphant humanism overcom- ing the evils of ‘total’ politics, both left and right, but this does not seem to be Orwell’s intent. A product of its riven times, its complex commitments need careful unpicking.” 3

Parallels in Today’s World

Michael Kakutani writes, “The dystopia described in George Orwell’s nearly 70-year-old novel 1984 suddenly feels all too familiar. A world in which Big Brother (or maybe the National Security Agency) is always listening in and high-tech devices can eavesdrop in people’s homes. (Hey, Alexa, what’s up?) A world of endless war, where fear and hate are drummed up against foreigners and movies show boatloads of refugees dying at sea. A world in which the govern- ment insists that reality is not ‘something objective, external, existing in its own right’ — but rather, ‘whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth.’

1984 shot to No. 1 on Amazon’s best-seller list this week, after Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to President Trump, described demonstrable falsehoods told by the White House press secretary Sean Spicer — regarding the size of inaugural crowds — as ‘alternative facts.’ It was a phrase chillingly reminiscent, for many readers, of the Ministry of Truth’s efforts in at ‘reality control.’ To Big Brother and the Party, Orwell wrote, ‘the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense.’ Regardless of the facts, ‘Big Brother is omnipotent’ and ‘the Party is infallible.’

As the novel’s hero, Winston Smith, sees it, the Party ‘told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,’ and he vows, early in the book, to defend ‘the obvious’ and ‘the true’: ‘The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall to- ward the earth’s center.’ Freedom, he reminds himself, ‘is the freedom to say that two plus two make four,’ even though the Party will force him to agree that ‘TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE’ — not unlike the way Mr. Spicer tried to insist that Mr. Trump’s inauguration crowd was ‘the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration,’ despite data and photographs to the contrary.

3 Luckhurst, Roger. “Nineteen Eighty Four and the Politics of Dystopia.” “Discovering Literature: 20th Century. British Library.” https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/nineteen-eighty-four-and-the- politics-of-dystopia. Web. 20 February, 2019.

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In 1984, Orwell created a harrowing picture of a dystopia named Oceania, where the govern- ment insists on defining its own reality and where propaganda permeates the lives of people too distracted by rubbishy tabloids (‘containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology’) and sex-filled movies to care much about politics or history. News articles and books are rewrit- ten by the Ministry of Truth and facts and dates grow blurry — the past is described as a be- nighted time that has given way to the Party’s efforts to make Oceania great again (never mind the evidence to the contrary, like grim living conditions and shortages of decent food and cloth- ing).

Not surprisingly, 1984 has found a nervous readership in today’s 'post-truth' era. It’s an era in which misinformation and fake news have proliferated on the web; Russia is flooding the West with propaganda to affect elections and sow doubts about the democratic process; poisonous ten- sions among ethnic and religious groups are fanned by right-wing demagogues; and reporters scramble to sort out a cascade of lies and falsehoods told by President Trump and his aides — from false accusations that journalists had invented a rift between him and the intelligence com- munity (when he had compared the intelligence agencies to Nazis) to debunked claims that mil- lions of unauthorized immigrants robbed him of a popular-vote majority.

Orwell had been thinking about the novel that would become 1984 as early as 1944, when he wrote a letter about Stalin and Hitler, and ‘the horrors of emotional nationalism and a tendency to disbelieve in the existence of objective truth because all the facts have to fit in with the words and prophecies of some infallible führer.’

Decades later, in the 1970s, 1984 would frequently be cited as holding a mirror to the Nixon ad- ministration’s duplicitous handling of the war in Vietnam and its linguistic, ‘Newspeak’-like contortions over Watergate (like the press secretary Ron Ziegler’s description of his earlier statements as ‘inoperative’).

In his 1944 letter, Orwell presciently argued that ‘there is no such thing as a history of our own times which could be universally accepted, and the exact sciences are endangered as soon as mil- itary necessity ceases to keep people up to the mark.’ And in 1984, the word ‘science’ does not even exist: ‘the empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles’ of the Party.

This sort of marginalization in 1984 speaks to some of the very fears scientists have expressed in response to reports that the Trump administration is scrutinizing studies and data published by researchers at the Environmental Protection Agency while placing new work on ‘temporary hold.’ Similar concerns about an Orwellian consolidation and centralization of government media control have been expressed over administration efforts ‘to curb the flow of information from several government agencies involved in environmental issues,’ and the possibility, as Politico reported, that the new White House might also try to put its stamp on the Voice of America, the broadcasting arm that ‘has long pushed democratic ideals across the world.’

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Of course, all of these developments are being constantly updated, with regular flurries of news and denials and counter-denials — a confusing state of affairs that itself would not have surprised Orwell, since he knew the value of such confusion to those in power.

Another book, published two years after 1984, also made Amazon’s list of top 100 best sellers this week [2017]: Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism” (1951). A kind of nonfiction bookend to 1984, the hefty philosophical volume examines the factors that fueled the perfect storm of events leading to the rise of Hitler and Stalin and World War II — notably, the power that centralized storytelling can exert over anxious populations suffering from the dislocations of history, by offering scapegoats, easy fixes and simple cohesive narratives. If such narratives are riddled with lies, so much the better for those in power, who then succeed in redefining the daily reality inhabited by their subjects.

‘Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst,’ Arendt wrote, ‘no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.’ This mixture of gullibility and cynicism, Arendt suggested, thrived in times rife with change and uncertainty, and was exploited by politicians’ intent on creating a fictional world in which ‘failures need not be recorded, admitted, and remembered.’ In this world, 2 + 2 does = 5, as Orwell noted, and the acceptance of bad arithmetic simply be- comes a testament to the power of rulers to define reality and the terms of debate.

A despairing vision to be sure, though Christopher Hitchens pointed out that Orwell’s own commitment in his life to continually seek ‘elusive but verifiable truth’ was a testament to human tenacity and “that tiny, irreducible core of the human personality that somehow manages to put up a resistance to deceit and coercion.”4

“In Teaching 1984 in 2016, a piece for The Atlantic written in November [2017], Andrew Sim- mons writes that he is ‘ecstatic to be a teacher at this time in American history.’ He writes: ‘I have a responsibility — not to transform every liberal parent’s progeny into a slightly sharper copy or radicalize future voters skeptical of politics, but to shore up their critical faculties, to make them more skilled readers, writers, and thinkers. And to also make them decent, compassionate, alert, engaged truth-seekers, neither callous, fearful Party enablers nor complacent, dead- eyed Proles who poke their iPhones and scoff at memes and chirp their discontent in brief blips of coherence. Bravery is something that people can be taught. Books may be the best teachers for what to do when the fireworks veer too close’.”5

4 Kakutani, Michael. “Why 1984 is a must read in 2017.” The New York Times. 16 January, 2017. Web. 20, September 2018.

5 Simmons, Andrew. “Teaching 1984 in 2016.” The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/ar- chive/2016/11/teaching-1984-in-2016/508226/. Web. 17 March, 2019.

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Glossary of Newspeak The following is adapted from the GWB Entertainment and South Australia study guide from their production. http://statetheatrecompany.com.au/content/uploads/2017/05/1984-Study-Guide-Australian-Tour.pdf

Anti-Sex League Organization Advocating Celibacy Among Party Members.

Big Brother The Dictatorial Leader Of The Party (See Goldstein, Emmanuel). A symbol of the constant surveillance and reminder that “Big Brother is watching you.”

The Brotherhood an Underground Network Founded by Emmanuel Goldstein, an original member of the Inner Party. Goldstein turned on Big Brother and was one of the few to escape during the revolution.

Double-Plus An example of how comparative and superlative meanings are communicated in Newspeak. ‘Plus’ acts as an intensifier, and ‘double’ even more so. In Newspeak, ‘better’ be- comes ‘plus-good’ and even better is ‘double-plus-good.’

Doublethink The ability to hold two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously and accept both of them. Face Crime Any improper expression that carries the suggestion of abnormality or of something hidden. A nervous tic or unconscious look of anxiety could be a punish- able offense.

Goldstein’s Book Referred to simply as “The Book”, Emmanuel Goldstein’s record is a compendium of all the heresies, of which Goldstein was the author and which circulated clandestinely here and there.

Inner Party Oceania’s political class, who enjoy a higher quality of life than general Party members. They are dedicated entirely to Big Brother and the principles of Party rule.

Ministry Of Love (also Miniluv) Oceania’s interior ministry, enforcing loyalty and love of Big Brother through fear, oppression and thought modification. As its building has no windows, the interior lights are never turned off.

Ministry Of Truth (Also Mini-True) The Party’s communication apparatus, by which historical records are amended in keeping with its approved version of events.

Newspeak The official language of Oceania. Designed to make thought crime impossible, its vocabulary gets smaller every year, asserting that thought crime – and therefore any crime – cannot be committed if the words to express it do not exist.

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Oceania One Of Three Super-states Over Which Big Brother Exercises Totalitarian Rule. Its Neighboring Territories Are Eurasia And Eastasia.

Old-Speak The Version of English Preceding Newspeak. In Newspeak, words that represent politically incorrect ideas are eliminated.

Old-Think Ideas and patterns of thought that are inconsistent with the Party’s principles.

The Party The general population of Oceania, comprising middle class bureaucrats and other government employees.

Resistance The revolutionary group said to have been led by Emmanuel Goldstein in an uprising against the Party.

Room 101 A room in the Ministry of Love where thought criminals are taken.

Telescreen Two-way screens installed in the homes of all Party members to broadcast information and ensure constant surveillance. There is no way to control what is broadcast; only its volumes and the screen cannot be turned off.

Thought Crime All crime begins as a thought, therefore all crime is thought crime. A person who has committed thought crime is a thought criminal, even before committing the act itself.

Thought Police Law enforcement department designed to detect mental political transgressions.

Two Minutes’ Hate A daily broadcast showing instances of thought crime.

Ungood The opposite of good.

Unperson The process of altering and erasing records in order to eradicate someone from cultural memory. Once unpersoned, an individual’s previous existence can be denied.

Youth League Group for children in which membership is mandatory. Members’ primary task is to monitor the activities of their parents.

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The World Map in 1984

Oceania is believed to be composed of the Americas, the British Isles (called “Airstrip One” in the novel), Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, and southern Africa below the River Congo. It also controls—to different degrees and at various times during the course of its perpetual war with either Eurasia or Eastasia—the polar regions, India, Indonesia and the islands of the Pacific. Oceania lacks a single capital city, although London and apparently New York may be regional capitals. In the novel, Emmanuel Goldstein, Oceania’s declared public enemy number one, de- scribes it in the fictional book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism as a result of the United States having absorbed the British Empire. Goldstein’s book also states that Oceania’s primary natural defense is the sea surrounding it.

Eurasia was formed when the Soviet Union annexed the rest of continental Europe, creating a single polity stretching from Portugal to the Bering Strait. Orwell frequently describes the face of the standard Eurasian as “21ongolic” in the novel. The only soldiers other than Oceanians that appear in the novel are the Eurasians. When a large number of captured soldiers are executed in Victory Square, some Slavs are mentioned, but the stereotype of the Eurasian maintained by the Party is Mongoloid, like O’Brien’s servant, Martin. This implies that the Party uses racism to avert sympathy toward an enemy. According to Goldstein’s book, Eurasia’s main natural defense is its vast territorial extent, while the ruling ideology of Eurasia is identified as “NeoBolshevism”, a variation of the Oceanian “Ingsoc.”

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Eastasia’ s borders are not as clearly defined as those of the other two super-states, but it is known that they encompass most of modern-day China, Japan, Taiwan, and Korea. Eastasia repeatedly captures and loses Indonesia, New Guinea, and the various Pacific archipelagos. Its political ide- ology is, according to the novel, “called by a Chinese name usually translated as Death-worship, but perhaps better rendered as “Obliteration of the Self.” Orwell does not appear to have based this on any existing Chinese word or phrase.

More to Think About:

This famous commercial, shown during the Super Bowl in January, 1984, advertised the Macintosh computer. How could students use ideas, images or quotes from the novel to advertise something today, whether a product or a public service? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zfqw8nhUwA&feature=youtu.be

Professor John Bowen explores truth, fiction, repression and freedom in George Orwell’s iconic 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. The film is shot at Senate House in London, formerly the Ministry of Information, and the building on which Orwell based the Ministry of Truth. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtmcyIP3GLE

Big Brother, hackers are watching you and your fridge http://www.1984play.com.au/big-brother- hackers-are-watching-you-and-your-fridge/

Who was George Orwell https://headlong.co.uk/ideas/who-was-george-orwell/

Why Orwell endures? https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/books/review/Wheatcroft-t.html Things to think about, prior to performance:

• Have you ever hear the phrase “Big Brother is watching you?” How do you understand

this phrase?

• Why do you think there is such controversy over truth and fiction in our daily politics?

• How is technology changing our understanding of privacy?

• What is more important to you today: your privacy or national security?

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• Why do some individuals take a stand against oppression while others choose to

participate in it?

• How do governments balance the rights of individuals with that of the common good?

• Is an individual able to change a society? Things to watch for in performance:

• Notice the set pieces, the furniture, the costume pieces and the prop pieces. Are the shapes predictable? What is recurrent and what is different? How does each location look alike or different?

• Notice the layering of sound, both before the performance begins and during the

production. Can you find a recurring theme of music? Notice when there is “industrial sound” and when there is “natural” sound.

• Notice the colors in the production. Which pieces, patterns, or colors are unique and

which do several characters or scenes share?

• Notice when the action takes place on the stage and when it invades the theatre where the audience sits. What is that effect?

• Notice where the actors look at the telescreen during the production. Does it affect your

experience?

• What is your reaction to the end of the production? What does this say about human relationships?

Things to think about after the performance:

• What is power, and how is it gained and used?

• How can any of these characters trust anyone? Consider that O’Brien actually tells the truth to Winston and Julia. What does that mean?

• Why Syme, Parsons, and Winston all are arrested?

• What are the fundamental differences between Julia and Winston?

• What does “we are the dead” mean to the characters and/or to you?

• What are the dangers of government-controlled media?

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• Do you think changing language can actually change thought?

• Do you have a different perspective on the phrase “Big Brother is watching you”

following the production?

• Doublethink means the power to hold two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind

simultaneously, and accept both of them. Do you think this is possible?

• What do you think the phrase “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls

the present controls the past,” mean in context of today’s world?

Other Analysis “Tools”:

• What happens in the very last moments of the play? Certainly, the last few minutes, but, more importantly, the last thirty seconds? In that time, WHAT happens or is said, and what does that say about what the play is ‘about?’

• In addition, what is the significance of the title? Why did the playwright decide that this

was the quintessential title for his work? The running time for this production is 2 1/2 hours, with a 15 intermission (please consult box office the week of opening) Thursday April 4 at 8pm Friday April 5 at 8pm Saturday April 6 at 8pm Sunday April 7 at 3pm

Thursday April 11 at 8pm Friday April 12 at 8pm Saturday April 13 at 8pm Sunday April 14 at 3 Please note the pre-show discussion will take place prior to the preview performance, Thursday, April 4, in MAC 140 from 6:45 pm – 7:15 pm. The pre-show discussion will include the director and designers, and will be a discussion of the approach to this production.

The post-show discussion will take place on Friday, April 11, following the performance. The post-show will include the director, cast and crew who will answer questions from the audience.