In December 1948, George Orwell completed a novel that would be recognized as one of the masterpieces of dystopian literature. In the decades that followed, “1984″ has been translated into sixty-two languages. Its prescience and language are at the center of an ongoing debate over the role of government in our privacy, our security, and our freedom.

In 2006, Tim Robbins and the L.A. based theatre company The Actors’ Gang debuted a stage adaptation of Orwell’s groundbreaking work by Michael Gene Sullivan. The show has seen productions worldwide and on June 17^th it returns to the West Coast for a limited three-week engagement at REDCAT.

Robbins is a stand-out performer in drama (The Shawshank Redemption, Mystic River) and comedy (Bull Durham, The Hudsucker Proxy, and recently Noise), with critically acclaimed turns as writer-director (Bob Roberts, Dead Man Walking), but his career began onstage. He was one of the founding members of The Actors’ Gang and currently serves on the board as Artistic Director.

Now Mr. Robbins talks with LA.CityZine about the challenge of translating “1984″ live, his role in the process, and why Orwell’s message is as critical now as when it was first printed nearly 60 years ago.

From a director’s standpoint, how do you feel about how relevant the material is becoming?

You have mixed feelings of course. I wish it weren’t relevant, but I think it’s important to realize how prescient Orville was. There’s a great lesson in the book, a great warning. It’s funny because when you first mention it, or at least this was my reaction when I was approached about it, is ‘oh, that’s passed.’ That was a warning for that year. [You assume] we’re passed it and we’re safe.

Then when I read the adaptation by Michael Jean Sullivan I was stunned at how relevant it was. Of course I thought he’d made stuff up and updated it for now. Then I went back to the book and was shocked to find so much that I had forgotten since I’d read it in 1983. For that reason alone I feel like we’ve been re-introducing to a new generation of readers, and that I think is important. I think forty states have seen this production.

This show has been traveling internationally as well?

Yes, yes four continents. It’s been very exciting for [The Actor's Gang] as a group, to take this into all kinds of different communities. From conservative areas in Utah to Hong Kong, China. To hear the dialogues after the show, the kind of universal concern about preserving liberty and freedom, of what the play raises about the function of war in modern societies, post-nuclear bomb, great enigmas are brought up by Orwell that bear discussion.

[Orwell] wrote in 1948, which was a really interesting year. Actually he wanted to call the book 1948, but the publisher convinced him to switch the last two numbers.

I’ll admit the last time I read the book cover to cover was in school. I was disturbed by it, I found it difficult to scrutinize.

I’ll tell you a good shorthand, if you don’t have time to read the entire book, find the chapter of the book within the book, the one Winston’s given by O’Brien? Read the ‘War Is Peace’ chapter. There’s some stunning stuff in there about the necessity of perpetual war. It’s very interesting.

Especially now, considering the talk around Iran?

Terrorism in general. Terrorism is a tactic, not a nation-state. You can wage war against a tactic forever. What is the rubric by which we enter victory versus defeat? How do you win the war on terror?

What were the challenges of putting this onstage? How has the adaptation made a theatrical presentation possible?

It’s an intense hour and forty five minutes. For me it’s always about the emotion, telling the story in a way that’s compelling. The challenge of this is that it’s a very large story. [The adaptation] has allowed for the entire story to be told in a way that makes complete sense, given what happens in the book. It has a lot to say about interrogation, about use of language, and manipulation of thought, and the idea that people’s liberties are being encroached upon.

It’s set in an interrogation chamber, and that in fact does happen in the book. But he’s telling this story, basically starting three-quarters of the way in, telling the story through the diary.

Why the two-week limited engagement?

I believe that was all that was available at REDCAT, and also we’d already performed it at our theater. We just wanted to put it on at a different venue.

I caught the National Association of Broadcasters speech on Youtube. Congrats on that.

[laughs] Thanks.

A lot of what you touch on in that speech, freedom of discourse, cheap distractions in the media, do these topics have an overt parallel in this adaptation of 1984? Did that contribute to you being inspired to put this onstage?

When I read the adaptation and re-read the book, it kind of re-affirmed some of the things I’d felt about the way the media is used. [In Orville's story] it’s telescreen, and it’s purpose and function in society, part of it is to inspire hatred and part of it is to distract with mindless entertainment.

If you consider the possibilities as far as truly educating the citizenry, as part of participating in democracy, there’s enormous potential. But it seems what we’re doing, we’re letting it perform the function of distracting and dividing us. It’s a constant venue of useless information and petty gossip. Like I said in the [NAB] speech, a starlet with her panties off is getting more coverage than the war in Iraq. There’s something really wrong with that.

You address a lot of challenging topics in your work, but you’ve had a lot of success in comedy. How is comedy important to you?

I think comedy is an effective way of telling a story, but whether it’s a comedy or a drama you have to appeal to the humanity in the material. I think the challenge of the actor and the director is to find a way for the audience to participate emotionally in the story. I tend toward comedies that have a little bit of an edge to them and still remind us of the more serious elements of the story we’re telling. With 1984, the core of it is an attempt to find the deeper humanity in all the characters, regardless of whether they are the good guys and the bad guys, to find a way in for the audience to feel compassion for Winston Smith as well as his torturers.

How do you avoid demonizing one side? To guide the audience from siding easily with the victims?

They’re all human beings. It’s interesting because I had a period when I did three pieces, all having to do with torture. One of them was a movie called ‘Catch A Fire’ where I played a torturer. In research for the movie I met some former Afrikaner police officers who had participated in torturing rebel leaders and ANC members in Apartheid South Africa. The thing that struck me the most was that these guys, as one of them told me, they were forever destroyed profoundly by their participation. You can’t enter a room, torture someone and leave the room with your soul intact. It’s a sacrifice a lot of them made in service to their country. Call it misguided if you will, a lot of them were soldiers following orders and felt they had to do this for the safety of their homeland. When you humanize it to the point where you have to play a character like this, you have to open your heart to what their tragedy is as well. Because they’re forever ruined by the experience, and we all know the tortured are all ruined to some degree.

I think a lot of celebrities wish the internet didn’t exist, but you seem to have embraced it as a medium. What makes it so compelling?

I think there’s enormous potential there, and I would even say the future of free information and a free press lies in the internet. I already know ten websites I can trust for verifiable information that is not manipulated by a newspaper or a tv channel with ties to a defense contractor. There’s rampant corruption in the news delivered in the major media.

There’s been a rash of apologies in the mainstream media, lately.

Yeah, and the New York times apologized a year-and-a-half ago. Sorry, it’s too late. I think that’s what they’re finding now, and the only reason they are apologizing is because they realize they might have lost a very large number of people to the internet. I think there’s a real trust issue here.

I think the encouraging sign is, during this whole primary season, you saw the attempt by major news organizations to repeat in news cycles the Reverend Wright issue. Then there was the comment about bitterness in people that he fully explained in his speeches in a very inspiring way. I watched the way the media covered that and they gave a bit of lip service to the speech, they showed a couple of clips and that was essentially it. Then they went on their cycle again, ‘will this damage [Obama]‘ the same thing they’ve been doing for years, the same way they’ve torn down other people and it didn’t work this time. It didn’t work because of the internet, youtube, and various websites that various people trust now, more than the major media. [Obama's] support went up. The fact that the American public is more engaged now and realize they have to find their information elsewhere and spend the time to listen to the entire speech to get what’s being said is a profound change.

They can ignore it all they want but the American public realizes they were sold a bill of goods in this war. A majority of it. However they want to spin it, it was pure propaganda that sold this war, and there was a complicity in the major media. If I knew the truth, [the public] could know the truth. That’s why I don’t buy politicians who say ‘we were given faulty information.’

The scary thing is, people ask me ‘you’re an actor, why do you have to do this stuff?’ I’m like yeah, that’s exactly my point. Why do I have to do it? Where’s the opposition party? Where are the people who’ll stand in front of a tank, who’s job it is to stand in front of a tank. Where are the people who are supposed to be protecting our rights as citizens? I wish I didn’t have to.

How involved are you with Timrobbins.net?

I was hands on, but the problem is, I haven’t updated it for a year. We put the recent speech up there, but I have to get a little more savvy with my [admin] skills. I want to learn how to do that myself because there are some films I want to put on there.

What’s next for you in the meantime? Time off? More work with The Actor’s Gang?

I’m working on casting something right now. I’ve got a couple of things that I’m writing and I’m working on some music as well.

Thanks again, Tim.

Thanks.

The show runs for three weeks starting this Tuesday, June 17th at the Redcat. The show runs Tuesday to Sunday at 8:30pm and 3:00pm on Sunday.

Tickets range from $18 to $100 and you can makes reservations of the phone a 310-838-4264 x12 or onlin here. Discounts provided for students and CalArts faculty and staff.

Redcat
631 West 2nd St
Los Angeles, CA 90012

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