Play ‘1984’ will be shown at the Sarajevo War Theatre tonight at 8 p.m.
‘1984’ is an adaptation of novel by George Orwell, and directed by Benjamin Bajramović and Jasenko Pašić.
The play had its premiere in January 2012, and on 6 February it will be the guest of the Student Festival SZEM in Miskolc, Hungary.
The play is a dystopian and satirical novel set in Oceania, where society is tyrannized by the Party and its totalitarian ideology. The Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public mind control, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (Ingsoc) under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as thought crimes. Their tyranny is headed by Big Brother, the quasi-divine Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality, but who may not even exist. Big Brother and the Party justify their rule in the name of a supposed greater good.
The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party who works for the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to re-write past newspaper articles so that the historical record always supports the current party line. Smith is a diligent and skillful worker, but he secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother.
