With the pandemic ever so grudgingly moving aside, our battered population again considers returning to classrooms for good. The wonderfully talented actress Susan Finque and director John Vreeke are all set to have us rethink what it means to be a student as they prepare “Miss Margarida’s Way” to run at West of Lenin,May 13 through May 22nd. This immersive dark comedy written in 1971 by Brazilian playwright Robert Athayde, explores the ramifications of having a very powerful teacher heading up a classroom and moves on to use this platform to investigate the nature of totalitarianism.
The work was quite successful in Brazil until the play’s veiled criticism of the country’s regime was controversial enough to get it banned, but the show enjoyed a successful run at the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1977 where the New York Times noted that the script doesn’t feature a stream of consciousness but rather an all out flood. Miss Margarida rules over an 8th grade classroom and ensures her students (the audience) that she “can send any of you to the principal’s office. There are a very few students Miss Margardia has already sent to the principal’s office. None of them has ever come back. Miss Margarida does not know what happened to them, but Miss Margarida can guarantee you nothing good happened to them.” To get in on the fun, go to Eventbrite.com for more ticket information.