Review: Guantanamo

How many people are being incarcerated detained at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba?

Ever since the country entered the "War on Terror" in 2001, the American and British governments have been hard pressed to demonstrate that they are doing something to make the world safe for democracy, that they are doing something to insure the safety of citizens. Of course, there are only so many goat herds and tents that one can blow up in Afghanistan and so many weapons of mass destruction not to be found in Iraq, so Coalition forces turned to political and religious leaders who support Enemies of Freedom in Afghanistan, Iraq, and throughout the world. The problem is, how far down does the "problem" go? And who supports Enemies of Freedom: after all, don't all those bearded ragheads look alike?

As American and British politicians have so often reminded the public, there is no formally organized, official government or group which is the enemy in the War on Terror; consequently, it is a challenge to ascertain who in a village or who in a mosque is "good" and who is "bad." The governments' responses have been pretty much just a matter of suspecting any dark skinned Muslim male, although they will deny that. Choosing to "err" on the side of safety, large numbers of Muslims have been rounded up and held by military and police authorities for questioning—questioning which can last for months or years. Calling these people being held "enemy combatants" rather than "prisoners of war," the prisoners detainees have been denied Geneva Convention rights and initially were denied American constitutional rights of habeas corpus and speedy trials. Nearly a thousand people have been detained at Guantanamo Bay without any criminal or military charges against them, and liberal human rights groups estimate that over five hundred are still imprisoned detained today.

With this historical background, British playwrights Victoria Brittain and Gillian Slovo have crafted the documentary play, Guantanamo: 'Honor Bound to Defend Freedom,', which has been playing this past month in the Milton Theater at Washington's Studio Theater. What is particularly interesting about this play is that it isn't just another fictional, whiny, liberal rant; the lines are actual quotations from trial and deposition testimony and politicians' press conferences and speeches.

The truth of the lines is the strength of the play; at the same time, the documentary approach is the play's weakness. It's a hard two hours for the audience.

As the audience enters the theater, it is met with a stark, uncurtained stage. Tall chain link fencing runs all the way across the upstage side of the stage. Spread across the stage on both sides of the fence are sturdy metal cots with thin mattresses, each occupied by a man, some in white underwear, some in orange jumpsuits, all bored, all alone. These men remained on their cots throughout the play, throughout intermission, and were still in place when the audience left the theater at the end of the evening. Down stage of the cots, five sets of a small table and a chair were arranged across the stage in two rows.

As the play opens, the tables and chairs are filled with various, occasionally changing, seated characters: a few parents, a couple of former detainees, a brother, several reporters, a couple of lawyers, and so forth. An actor portraying a British law lord enters from the back of the house, walks to a podium down center stage, and gives a speech to the House of Lords about the "situation." Thus the barrage of quotations and testimony begins. Next, the various characters on stage give their testimony as a series of interwoven solilioquies, sometimes even quoting letters from detained family members, giving a couple of the detainees the opportunity to deliver lines. There is no real interaction between the characters, there is essentially no action to the play, other than quietly walking on stage to take a seat, and the lines are not quickly or melodramatically delivered, though, which is why the audience must be both engaged in the material and very much awake. The script is very much just a slice of life without any real beginning or ending, and no self-righteous concluding preaching. There is no curtain call, and the on-stage detainees merely continue their trying existence.

This is very much an ensemble cast. Several of the actors played multiple parts. While it is difficult to single out specific actors, Leo Erickson gave a chillingly accurate portrayal of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and many television viewers will recognize "former detainee" Andrew Stewart-Jones from his appearances on Third Watch, Sex & the City, and various commercials.

Guantanamo, which opened November 2, closed this past Sunday, so readers, unfortunately, will no longer be able to view this production. Given the ongoing political climate, the continuing military action, the current Congressional debate about detainee and prisoner torture, and the pressures of Christian and Muslim fundamentalism, this play will no doubt be mounted by other companies elsewhere in the country, and it has a message which deserves to be heard and considered.