By Trëndelina Gashi
If utopia is impossible with probability 1, for Albanians Orwellian dystopia does not seem so impossible. George Orwell's novel "1984" is one of those literary works that time has not run out. Sometimes it stands as a warning of what society can suffer and therefore daily perseverance is needed to further push dystopia away. And other times, it feels very tangible, because societies continue to produce the realities that are warned about in "1984".
These days, "1984" has been performed on the stage of the National Experimental Theater "Kujtim Spahivogli" in Tirana, bringing with it a question that goes beyond artistic performance: how far can power go in controlling the individual and how willing is society to defend its freedom?
Orwell built us a dystopian world where power is not satisfied with just controlling the actions of citizens. Power seeks to control thoughts, memory, language, feelings and, above all, truth. Constant surveillance and patronage, propaganda, manipulation of information and fear are the mechanisms used to subjugate the individual. “Big Brother” is not simply a threatening figure. It is the symbol of the system that observes everything and knows everything, from physical action to the threads of thought. It is the symbol of the system that also seeks to determine everything and does not allow any independent or intimate space for thought.
This work and its message take on a special dimension these days when the streets of Tirana have become protest spaces. It is difficult to follow the performance and not see the symbolic connection between the stage and the streets where citizens demand to be heard. “1984”, brought to the stage by Ema Andrea and her colleagues Rafael Hoxhaj, Eva Gjika, Jozef Shiroka, Adriana Tolka and Nikolin Ferketa, invites us to carefully observe the relationship between power, institutions, media and citizens; between individual and independent thought and expression and the propaganda of power.
When truth becomes the object of political interpretation, when propaganda is imposed and seeks to replace debate, and when the citizen feels powerless in the face of decision-making, a crisis of confidence has arisen and violence begins. The rebellion of the individual and, more broadly, of society begins precisely where man refuses to accept that truth can be determined by someone else, or that truth is the virtual reality imposed on him by propaganda.
The staging of the play “1984”, directed by Dino Mustafić and dramatized by Jeton Neziraj, is currently more than an artistic event. The play conveys the message that freedom is not always lost through a major act of violence. Sometimes it is slowly eroded, through indifference, fear, self-censorship and the conviction that the individual voice no longer matters.
Orwell reminds us that a society should not wait until 1984 to understand the danger of losing freedom. It must react whenever the truth is questioned, when power refuses to accept control, and when citizens lose faith that they can influence their future. In today's Tirana, Orwell's question remains the same: Do we still have the courage to think freely, to speak the truth, and to disagree with what is imposed on us?
In the two-hour Orwellian, the boundary between acting and individual protest had been wonderfully melted. Spectators could not distinguish whether the acting was magnificent in its blatantness, or simply, without much effort the actors revealed themselves and their reality in the delineation of the characters, who did not become abstract.
And while some citizens protested in the streets, those who sat in the theater hall on the days of the staging of "1984" also seemed to be an extension of the protest, because they filled the hall for days, reminding us that the greatest danger to freedom is not only when someone tries to take it away from us, but also when we learn to live without it.
