Information for Foreigners (1971) is a classic play. It’s also an unusual one. Its author, the Argentine dissident writer Griselda Gambaro, was determined to make her audience feel the injustice and absurdity of the oppressive regime that had consolidated power in her country. To do it, she kicked hard at the conventions of theatrical presentation, stripping away the familiar comfort of seats and a dedicated set. Instead, a tour guide leads the audience through a series of rooms containing isolated dramatic encounters and vivid examples of authoritarian cruelty. As it’s often staged, Information is bit like visiting a haunted house, if the monsters therein were bureaucrats, fascists, and other bullies in uniform.
For a landmark in the history of Latin American literature and political theater, Information for Foreigners isn’t all that well known in the States. The Jersey City Theater Center (165 Newark Ave.) will do their part to change that this weekend. JCTC is presenting three showings of the play: one at 7:30 p.m. tonight, and another at 7:30 tomorrow, and another at 4 p.m. on Sunday. Considering the Center’s long commitment to political art, it might not be too surprising that they’ve deemed Gambaro’s dark vision worth re-encountering. It’s also not unexpected that JCTC Executive Producer Olga Levina might liken the upsetting events depicted in Information for Foreigners to things she witnessed while growing up in Belarus.
But as she made absolutely clear in our chat, Levina was also drawn to Information for Foreigners because she felt it was relevant to the experience of living in Jersey City in 2024. The producer wants us to be vigilant about the signs of oppression and misgovernment in our backyard. Contemporary politicians in New Jersey may not dress and sound like Latin American or Eastern European autocrats, but Levina believes that they’re up to some of the same tricks. And since she considers the theater a means to speak truth to power, she views inadequate arts funding as an underhanded way to shut down dissent. “We’re doing this locally,” she told us, “to make a statement.”
Tris McCall/Jersey City Times: Typically, Information for Foreigners is done in a house and audience members are led from room to room. Are you simulating this experience at JCTC? Was there something about the Jersey City Theater Company space that lent itself to this kind of production?
Olga Levina: We have a space with a lot of room, and the director — Maru Garcia — wanted to try something different. She wanted to set the play in a building that had a governmental feel to it. That’s why she picked ours. The concrete and the coloring is suggestive of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
TMC: It’s set in Argentina, though, right?
OL: The playwright was Argentinian, but Information for Foreigners could apply to any government in any country. If you’re an oppressor, you’re an oppressor. It doesn’t matter where you are.
We chose a Mexican director because this piece is from South America, and we were happy to give an opportunity to an immigrant who has been denied other opportunities. She’s had her own experiences of facing down oppression.
TMC: It seems — and I say this as a fan of the play — specifically Latin American, and particularly about the Dirty War in Argentina. Do you think that something written in Latin America in the Seventies still applies to the politics of world as we experience it in 2024?
OL: I absolutely do. There are scenes in the play that relate to the Holocaust, scenes that address oppression on all different levels. Navalny just passed, and as we talk about this play, I can’t help but think about him and what he went through.
It’s a reminder that as arts professionals, we need to be brave and analyze our actions. I don’t want to be an oppressor or aid oppression. I need to speak out against injustice and express the pain I feel.
TMC: Information for Foreigners is very much about that, isn’t it? You’re shown these abuses of power, and as an audience member, you’re unable to speak back or do anything about them. You’re silenced by convention.
OL: Yes, that’s exactly right.
Maru has produced many plays in Mexico, and the way that they experience theater is different. The style is a little bit more performative. Also, audience members take the play very seriously in Mexico. Sometimes they’d want to intervene, and step in and fight!
TMC: Another challenge for the theater managers, right?
OL: Theater is difficult. It’s hard no matter where or how you’re trying to do it. It requires lots of money. Union guidelines change all the time. We have to pay the artists as well as we can, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Our space is big, and it’s expensive to heat in the winter. But it is essential to a society that the theater be healthy. Theater represents people. It’s the voice of the people.
When I started in Jersey City in 2007, I couldn’t even find a basement in Jersey City to do a show. There were no places to perform. I felt like: why is everything in New York? We have our own community, we have our kids here. We need theater, and we need to fund it properly. Otherwise, it becomes a huge problem for our democracy.
And the funding must be fair. My first grant for the theater was three thousand dollars for the year. On the other hand, we have the Pompidou. City Hall gave them $25,000 for one night. And they’re not even doing the even it in their own space. We have to ask: why?
TMC: You see things in Jersey City and in New Jersey that remind you of the discrimination and oppression you experienced in Europe?
OL: I do. Remember that freedom is never given. We always have to fight locally and globally. When I see our local government, I see powerful people using silence, and hiding behind big words, in order to get their way and to grab more power for themselves.
You cannot tell me that I don’t recognize it because I know it when I see it. I came to the United States in 1992, but before that, I lived through putsches, Brezhnev, Andropov, I lived through the killing of a president in Belarus because that president had really good values. So much of the manipulation was about kids. They brainwashed kids and used silence to shut down dissent.
So it doesn’t matter what country it is. People have to see it clearly and fight back.
TMC: I know you see Russia under Putin as the same sort of totalitarian threat that the Argentines faced in the ’70s. My question to you as a person who lived through Soviet-style oppression is — was it ever thus? Do you think the problem is Putin, or do you think the problem is Russia?
OL: That is a good question, and a hard one, too. Russia is vast — Russia is huge. People who get power over a country so huge, I don’t know why, but it becomes corrupting. Maybe it feels safe to oppress the people when you have so much power and money and you want to hold on to it. I just know that when the values of the people in control are about getting and holding power no matter what, the end result is what you have in Russia, and what you had in Argentina. In Belarus, Lukashenko has been sitting there forever. When I listen to his speeches, they’re just gibberish. I can’t believe that my brave and intelligent classmates have to live under this devil.
TMC: You’ve made your support for Ukraine clear in your programming. Do you worry that the support for Ukraine is wavering in the United States?
OL: Very unfortunately yes. It’s a little bit of politics, a little bit of fatigue, distractions from all of the things we’ve got going on, locally, in our own lives.
I was born in Kiev. I still have family in Ukraine, and people in Ukraine have always been freedom fighters. Ukrainians know how to work as a community.
TMC: Do you see the arts as essential to reinforcing that sense of community?
OL: My husband is a very small developer. They renovated White Eagle Hall with no taxpayer money. A hundred thousand people a year are walking Newark Avenue to get to the shows. The city has gotten a huge benefit from this. It’s an example of how support for the arts can pay off enormously. It’s not a theory. It’s not a dream. It’s actually happening.