A Chilean Playwright Says He Lacks Hope, Answers

Addressing about 30 students and faculty members in Spanish at UC Irvine on Thursday night, noted Chilean playwright Egon Wolff said he has no hope for any real changes in the way man lives.

Social and political conflicts between rich and poor are at the center of Wolff’s work, which has been produced in Europe and the United States as well as throughout South America.

He is perhaps best known for “The Invaders” (1963), his play about a rich industrialist who dreams his home will be invaded by the poor--a dream that comes true.

Chileans considered the play to be something of a prophesy when, in 1970, Salvador Allende Gossens was elected president. The first Marxist to be elected democratically to lead a nation in the Western Hemisphere, Allende had promised to turn Chile into a socialist state.

But three years later, military leaders overthrew Allende, who died during the coup. A junta, led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, was installed and remains in power today.

Wolff said that when he was younger he felt that he had some answers, which may have been reflected in his earlier plays. But now the 62-year-old dramatist--who also works as a chemical engineer--said he has no answers and is uncertain about the future of Chile. This attitude is at the core of Wolff’s more recent plays, which often are described as “circular” or without end.

He has maintained his emphasis on class conflict, however, because “people aren’t listening.” Wolff said his plays are directed at the ruling class, who have the responsibility and the power to change things. But he doesn’t write about politics specifically because “it doesn’t interest me.”

A student asked Wolff why he chooses to stay in Chile while other Chilean artists, such as fellow playwright Jorge Diaz, have left. Diaz has been living in Spain for more than 20 years. Wolff said Chile is where his family and his work are.

He later told a reporter that he has “never been bothered by one government or another” about his work. There is some censorship under Pinochet, he said, but it is mostly of television and “a few” newspapers. “They don’t bother with the theater very much.”

Recently, Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean writer and professor of literature and politics at Duke University, wrote an editorial in the New York Times stating that some actors had been threatened by a Chilean terrorist group for attacking the Pinochet regime in their work.

But Wolff said he had never heard of the terrorist group (identified by Dorfman as Trizano), and he does not believe that Pinochet would have been behind such a threat. It would be stupid, Wolff thinks, for the government “to openly menace these people. It’s all speculation.”

He also said Pinochet’s popularity is growing among Chileans, who are enjoying record low inflation and unemployment.

Still, Woolf said, he does not write for the future--even though he feels that South America, with the exception of Africa, may be the only place left where people still have a “certain spiritual innocence and the desire for analyzing the future of human beings.

“I write for the present of Chile, and that is enough,” he said. “Future,” he said, “is a word that sometimes terrifies me.”

Wolff’s lecture was the second in a series he will continue on campuses across the country over the next few weeks.