Play a Day: Don Quixote at Tiananmen Square

Daniel Ho

Since April 1, 2017, I have read 120 full-length plays as part of my "Play a Day" series. This year has been stranger than most, for obvious reasons, and went by, if not with speed, but without much distinction from one day to the next. But the plays stand out.

A large number of them had to do with injustice, in particular injustice against women. But they were each unique and stylish and most of them very, very good.

It is an inspiration to read these works, and I am glad to take one month a year to just binge on them.

For Thursday, the last day of April, I read Don Quixote at Tiananmen Square by Daniel Ho and posted at New Play Exchange.

The fictional knight of Cervantes appears in Bejing during the spring of 1989 to inspire a young man who sees himself as a harsh realist during a season of hope and idealism. Cervantes' Quixote was mad, and madness led him from a life of unhappiness to one of wonder and magic. Do we need to be insane to hope for freedom? To have the passion to fight against incredible odds?

When I say "we" I don't mean Americans. We don't know what form oppression takes, as fools stage protests because they cannot golf, or get haircuts. Today they, we protest on behalf of the system. I wonder how this play would appear with an all-white cast (with perhaps a Chinese-American Quixote) to illuminate what true oppression looks like. If those who would hold signs reading "Sacrifice the Weak" were to hear the words of these young Chinese students frm the mouths of those who appear like them, they might understand.

Or not. The world went mad a long time ago.

Thirty plays, thirty days. We will write, we will read. Stay well.

Play a Day: Her Own Devices

Lindsay Adams

Seven plays in seven days! Life swims past you when you never leave your house. For Tuesday, I read Her Own Devices by Lindsay Adams and available at New Play Exchange.

An appropriate read for these peculiar times. A pre-adolescent girl has been captive her entire life, held as a test subject ostensibly for her own safety. She has an autoimmune disorder, and absoluely any pathogens will kill her.

Or at least, that is the premise. That is what we are told. That is what any of us are told. What if COVID-19 is a myth and everything we have been told is a lie for some other purpose. Everyone staying indoors, no longer working, forbidden - by the state - from meeting in groups.

It's a good thing we have faith in our government instutitions. But I digress. Or do I?

The protagonist, the girl Madeline, would be inscrutible except we are let into her thoughts by way of her imaginary friend, and Adams has created a mind at once expanded and crippled by a lifetime of isolation and increasing mistrust by her doctors/captors.

This is a search for what is true and what is not, and also questions whether our inherent free-will is something we should really be happy about.

Who should I read tomorrow?