2004-2005 Season: Major Barbara
A Note from the Artistic Director
Theatre Lovers, Rep Fans, Theatre Angels, Donors, Long Time Subscribers, First Time Subscribers, Single Ticket Holders, Shaw Devotees, Sponsors, Person Who Saw the Line and Decided to Buy a Ticket,
Welcome to San Jose Rep! Our 24th Season is filled with ideas, music, visual expression, and an intriguing cross section of humanity. We start the season with George Bernard Shaw’s astonishing play, Major Barbara.
This is the 99 and 1/2 year anniversary of Major Barbara, yet the play feels like it was written today. The topics are: God, Guns and Gold. We can easily join in on this discussion.
I chose this play because this is an election year and it is time for all of us to think as clearly and critically as possible about how the world is run and what our individual responsibility is. The word “think” appears in the play about 75 times. Shaw provokes us with ambiguity and paradox. He seems to be literally shaking us out of complacency. But what precisely he wants us to think has perplexed and provoked people throughout this century.
Shaw himself was a socialist, but in this play he seems to be asking: Is socialism at odds with human nature? Can we eliminate suffering and poverty? Is it possible to disarm oppressive powers and not betray our cause of peace? Shaw wrote this play before weapons of mass destruction were invented, but he clearly sensed their coming. Shaw was definitely opposed to capitalism and believed in gradualism, but he offers us one hero who has great faith in capitalism, and another who appears to plan violent revolution. And the title role is a heroine who might seem to cave very quickly in her faith. Perhaps his two heroes and his heroine are reaching for the ideal in which the people, the poets and the powerful can come together to harness the great destructive forces in human nature and make the world a heaven on earth.
- Timothy Near, Artistic Director
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