Photo By The Lavin Agency

Truth to power: Ariel Dorfman discusses his signature work, Death and the Maiden, at Xaxier University on Sunday.

When Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott appeared last month at Xavier University his messages were many, but one was especially direct and timely.

"You should be asking why your government is even discussing torture," he told students at a Q&A before a performance of his works. "This is against your principles as a nation, is it not?"

Walcott's visit was part of a lecture series entitled "Ethics and Globalization" sponsored by Xavier's Ethics/Religion and Society (E/RS) Program. This weekend E/RS will host Latin American writer Ariel Dorfman and -- co-sponsor with Xavier's Theater Department -- a staging of his most famous play, Death and the Maiden.

"The lecture series brings to campus prominent intellectuals and public leaders having diverse perspectives on a particular issue," says Sarah Melcher, co-director of the program along with Edmund P. Cueva.

For Dorfman, who will deliver a talk Sunday evening entitled "Living, Feeling, Writing in Many Worlds: Reaching Out to the Global Community," the issue is torture.

In the early 1970s Dorfman was part of the administration of Chilean President Salvador Allende Gossens but was then forced into exile when a bloody coup brought Augusto Pinochet to power. Widely regarded as one of the greatest living Latin American authors, Dorfman now divides his time between Chile and the U.S. His experiences have fueled a number of novels and plays that addressed multiculturalism and terrorism more than a decade before those issues moved front and center on the world's political stage.

Death and the Maiden, which debuted in the early 1990s, is a complex thriller-cum-morality tale about a woman who believes that the strange visitor in her home is the same man who, under a military dictatorship, tortured and raped her many years before. Through a stunning twist of fate she takes the man -- who might or might not be her former torturer -- captive in order to extract a confession from him. The play enjoyed award-winning runs in both London and New York and was later made into a 1994 film, by Roman Polanski no less, with Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley.

"The play deals with the issue of torture in a very dramatic way," observes Melcher. "Since the incidents of torture at Abu Graib and rumors of torture overseas in the war on terror, the play is particularly timely."

Perhaps too timely, according to its author.

"I am surprised Death and the Maiden has not had many more major productions since 9/11," Dorfman says via e-mail from Qatar, where he is staging his play Voices From Beyond the Dark for the human rights organization Speak Truth to Power. "It asks the fundamental questions Americans should be asking themselves today: How do we react when someone has done us grievous harm? How do we avoid turning into our enemy? How do we avoid violence when violence is inflicted on us?

"We live in a climate, I guess, where the mere fact of asking these questions is denounced as being anti-patriotic, instead of understanding the greatest act of patriotism is to wonder about the ethics of our policies, past and present."

Melcher believes this is why Dorfman and his play are good fits for the E/RS program's cross-disciplinary objectives and Xavier's Jesuit tradition.

"His work provides an opportunity for the community to grapple with the implications of past uses of violence, with responsible ways of addressing that violence, and with exploring means of promoting communal healing," she says.

"Jesuits teach us to doubt and to hope," Dorfman adds in agreement. "I can just hope to deepen those experiences."

Although some productions of Death and the Maiden have been criticized for using Anglo performers, Dorfman believes the play is universal enough to be played by any actors, not just Chileans who have suffered torture. And that includes students who might not possess the sort of life experience the play's three roles would seem to require.

"I very purposely created a play that travels well, that combines local circumstances with more planetary dilemmas," he says. "It's been done in hundreds of colleges in the U.S. and abroad. All I care about is that they take these roles to heart and speak to the soul, sorrow and hope of my play."

Cathy Springfield, Xavier's Director of Theatre Arts, agrees, noting that if she picked only age- or experience-specific plays for her students she wouldn't be able to expose them -- or her audiences -- to challenging works. For instance, the show's director, adjunct acting instructor Cheryl Couch, last season staged the Pulitzer Prize-winner How I Learned to Drive, which dealt with incest. And later this year Springfield will direct the controversial Keely and Du, which takes an extreme look at the abortion debate.

The title Death and the Maiden is taken from the string quartet by Franz Schubert. In the play it's the piece the woman's captor plays repeatedly while raping and torturing her, giving the play's title double-edged meaning. And maybe that's why Springfield, who will use part of the piece to underscore the Xavier production, starts to think about Classical music.

"Art has a power beyond words," she says. "It's a shorthand sometimes that touches our souls as well as our minds. Remember that ad for the symphony a few years ago that used the term 'straight to the heart?' I've heard that the dominant rhythm in most Classical pieces resembles the same rhythm of our hearts. It is connected to us on a primal level."