"THE MONUMENT," JABOA Theatre Company and DePaul University at Victory Gardens Theater
BY LUCIA MAURO
The collaboration between JABOA Theatre Company and the Theatre School at DePaul University (as well as other educational divisions) on Colleen Wagner’s "The Monument" obviously came about because these artists felt an urgent need to promote a poignant discussion on the play’s immediate issues. A two-character drama set shortly after the Bosnian/Serbian conflict, it transplants audiences to that maddening gray zone of war, where established codes of behavior get twisted into justifications for inflicting unspeakable acts of violence on humankind.
Wagner’s 80-minute work – while it has a tendency to spill into didactic territory and tell more than show – raises searing questions about the ongoing cycle of retribution versus the more conducive long-term act of forgiveness. But it also digs deep into heart of what drives ordinary people to commit mass murder. Ironically, it’s often a burning need to stay alive.
"The Monument" refers to a forest, where 23 women are buried. Stetko, a 19-year-old soldier, is accused of raping and shooting them. He is released into the custody of – unbeknownst to him – the mother of one of his victims. This mysterious stranger, Mejra, may be his executioner or his savior. Stetko is sentenced to be executed for war crimes, but Mejra offers him a cryptic deal: either he chooses death or agrees to obey her every command (even if Mejra orders him to kill himself) and attain a vague sort of freedom.
Mejra then exacts a confounding revenge. She chains and beats Stetko and messes with his mind – telling him horrible stories about his girlfriend’s possible murder and gang rape. She calculates a gnawingly desperate system for breaking Stetko’s will. Eventually, Mejra commands him to dig up the remains of those 23 women and create a monument to their memory (even if it means remembering the color of their eyes or a beauty mark on their skin).
The play opens with a ferociously painful monologue by Stetko as he recounts how the other soldiers forced him to perform these ghastly acts or be shot. He constantly talks about his impotence and how his truer and more tender thoughts always drifted to his virgin-girlfriend. Yet he delves more profoundly into the desperation that would lead people to so callously rip others apart. As a soldier, he was able to earn money for his destitute family; if he did not obey, his commanders threatened to murder his relatives.
When Mejra asks Stetko how he could possibly bring himself to shoot these young women, he responds, "A soldier is not supposed to think, only obey." She ponders whether there really are no choices in war. And, in this dramatization, one is reminded of how truth takes on a terrifying elasticity during wartime.
Director James Ostholthoff presents a staging that’s at once brutal and reverential. Jason Denaszek exhibits a mastery of dramatic tension, rage and humiliation as Stetko – but he may want to reevaluate his portrayal and take it to a more real, and less technique-laden, plane. Anne Wakefield’s Mejra touchingly evokes mystery and bottled-up anguish. However, she also can draw on her more honest resources as an actress to further transcend her character’s aching urge for vengeance.
But the play’s message earnestly and heartbreakingly unfolds. It’s a disturbing but also brilliantly metaphoric and poetic choice that the women’s remains are represented by pantyhose sewn together and tied to the surrounding trees. One gets the sense that they and their womanhood have been torn limb from limb.
When the possibility of forgiveness is offered, "The Monument" shows the potential for diminishing the chronically damaging crime of war. Wagner’s play gives identity and dignity to nameless victims of conflicts everywhere, and through it -- as Mejra might say -- "the truth has a way of emerging."•
JABOA Theatre Company and DePaul University’s production of "The Monument" runs through October 6 at Victory Gardens Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln. Tickets: $15. Call 773-871-3000.
