LIFE IS A DREAM
Anyway, it seems appropriate that Zak would take this particular moment to direct Pedro Calderon de la Barca’s Life Is a Dream. The title alone suggests the sort of lethean escape he might find attractive just now. But more to the point, the plot revolves around a man who finds his outward reality so disorienting, so capricious, inscrutable, malevolent, and just plain weird that he rejects it as a dream, and bases his actions on innate truths–on an internal reality–instead. I can see how Zak might identify.
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A pious man who eventually became a priest, Calderon intended this tale to be read in a Christian context–albeit an enlightened Christian context: it’s interesting to compare the notions here with those Descartes would come out with just a few years later. Zak very shrewdly sheds the Christian gloss and recasts Segismundo’s tale in 20th-century terms, as a testament to the absurdity of things. He draws out the cosmic joke, rather than the divine order, in Calderon’s vision.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jennifer Girard.
