FOPLE THINK that all an actor has to cdo is push a button and they can become any char- acter they want to. Not so. Just ask former West Vancouver actor Brenda Robins, who is star- ring in the Vancouver Playhouse production of Death and the Maiden, Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman’s gripping tale of a sur- vivor of torture and her quest for revenge. Dorfman based his lead charac- ter on a friend who had been beaten, arrested and tortured because of his opposition to former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and Robins, as Paulina Salas, says it’s one of the most dif- ficult roles she’s ever played. Sitting in the Playhouse produc- tion offices little more than a week before opening night, Robins, who is wolfing down a sandwich and cola in between:scenes, is still having trouble easing into the role. “My character has been raped and tortured and I've never expe- . tienced that kind of abuse, nor do | know anyone who has,” says a willowy Robins, last seen at the Playhouse as Hedda Gabler. ‘4t's also one of those plays where the ideas and emotions are so large it outgrows the rchearsal hall pretty quickly,” she says. “| have to try to imagine and understand the pain these people must have felt. I think it’s slowly working its way into my psyche ‘because my dreams have been very disturbing. | sleep for nine hours a night But | feel exhausted when | wake up!’’ Dorfman’s play deals with the . notion of revenge pitted against the desire for justice and peace in a fragile democracy. The play is set 15 years after the torture and confinement of Paulina, the char- acter played by Robins. She is married to a successful liberal Jawyer, Gerardo Escobar (Bill Dow). a By never confronting the subject -of her past torture, Paulina finds herself living in an emotional void. Then suddenly, her well-shielded secret is set loose when she overhears her husband talking to the man she believes to be her torturer. The accused, a doctorin good - standing, pleads innocence. But Paulina is convinced of his guilt and sets gut to put him on trial for his crimes. To understand how torture vic- tims cope with the atrocities of the past, director Jahn Cooper brought in a group of Latin American sur- vivors to talk to the cast. Says Robins: ‘We posed the question, what would you do if you confronted your torturers 15 years later? Most responded that they did not consider themselves Evelyn Jacob SPOTLIGHT FEATURE to be the same as their abusers morally.’ Knowing next to nothing about oppression or torture and not hav- . ing been politicized out of necessily, Robins says she was forced to question her qualifica- tions for the role. “But you find aspects of the character are universal,” she points out. ‘It’s also a play about the relationships between three people, ard | can tap into that.’? An animated woman with close-cropped brown hair, sky blue eyes and pointed features, Robins has run into similar dif- ficulties before. In the play Singer, she portrayed an Auschwitz prisoner — once again, circumstances beyond her possible experience. “We had to put lines on our face and hollow out our cheeks to make it look as if we hadn't eaten for days,’ she remembers. “We had to try to preseit this world that was not part of our own experience at all, and so we all felt this tremendcus sense of respon- sibility. “During ihe question and an- swer period following the play a man came forward. An. Auschwitz survivor, he said he was very touched and incredibly inoved by our performance.” In his director's notes, Cooper says that, although Beata and the Maiden takes place in a Latin American country, the underlying issues of the play — oppression, sexual and physical abuse, teat, doubt, isolation ~ are totally rel- evant to our time and place. Robins agrees. “One question the audience may ask themselves is, how culpable are we, all of us, not just the ones who committed the atrocities, but the ones who turn- ed their heads.” A Hillside secondary and Studia 58 graduate, Robins grew up about as far away from a Chilean torture chamber as possible. Her mother was involved in amatemr theatre in England and, according to Robins, was one of her strongest early influences. “When | was young she used to walk me around the garden and make me enunciate the names of all the flowers. | used to have to roll my Rs in rhedorendron, My DINNER BUFFET SPECIAL (Over 20 items Fridays and Saturdays) CALLING ALL JAZZ LOVERS TO JOIN US WED. AND SAT. NIGHTS the coach house inn 700 LILLOOET RD, NORTH VAN 985-3il1 mother has a diction addiction,” she laughs, Her professional stage debut came when she was still in acting school, in the Playhouse produc- tion of Blithe Spirit. : As a member of Tamahnous Theatre's Top Girls, Robins was spotted by Toronto director Bill Glassco, who recruited her io Toronto in 1984, There she made her way to film and TV productions, including the pilot for Street Legal (Robins played the Sonya Smits character), and the lead in Red Serge, a CBC series shat in B.C. “The kinds of films I'd like to do are the indigenous Canadian ones, which are still being made back east because there’s more funding there. | don’t think | fit the calegory of what the American * projects are looking for.’ For the last three years Robins has worked with Toronto's Theatre Plus, where she met her husband, actor Duncan Mcintosh. The two were married last fail and are planning a long-overdue European honeymoon when Death and the Maiden closes. Any chance the happy couple will relocate to Vancouver? Not likely. Vancouver will always be home, but Robins says she has to follow the work. . “4 feel my confidence really ~ built when I started working with actors i'd only heard about, like Nora McLellan and RH. f Brenda Robins stars in new Playhouse production of Death and the ay ease g NEWS photo Mike Wakelieid_ Thompson. BRENDA ROBINS says it’s one of the most difficult” “And being here and taking roles she’s played to date. The former West Van- part in the festivals is great. There’s couver actor portrays a victim of torture in the Van- the feeling that you’d made it somehow,” couver Playhouse production of Ariel, Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden opens this Friday (April 2) and cuns until April 24. Death and the Maiden.