Fine Arts Guild brings Orwell’s ‘1984’ to Estes Park

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

Those contradictions form part of the machinery keeping citizens obedient in George Orwell’s “1984,” and they are among the ideas director Lars Sage wants Estes Park audiences thinking about when the Fine Arts Guild of the Rockies brings the dystopian story to the stage this weekend.

The guild will present a fully staged adaptation of “1984” at 7 p.m. Aug. 14 and 15 and 2 p.m. Aug. 16 at the Estes Park High School Auditorium. Adapted by Robert Owens, Wilton E. Hall Jr., and William A. Miles Jr. from Orwell’s novel, the play condenses its sprawling portrait of a totalitarian society into a theatrical story centered on surveillance, resistance, and the consequences of challenging the Party.

For Sage, a Fine Arts Guild board member who is directing the production, choosing “1984” grew out of both a desire to tackle something different and conversations he was hearing around him.

“I like to do different things and stuff that’s maybe a little controversial,” Sage said. “And I thought, with the things that are going on in our country, I wanted to do something as a community.”

Several people had independently told him they had recently returned to Orwell’s novel.

“I’ve had a few people who came up to me and say, ‘I just happened to reread 1984.’ I go, ‘Wow, I wonder if there’s a script.’ So I found one,” Sage said. “This, I think, is just kind of a commentary on what our future could be. I think it’s just an appropriate time for this.”

Big Brother takes the stage

The theatrical adaptation cannot reproduce all of the novel’s detail, Sage said, but it preserves the elements that have made Orwell’s story synonymous with government surveillance and the manipulation of reality.

“It can’t go into as much detail in storytelling as that, so it covers the basic idea of Big Brother watching you,” Sage said. “You’re always under constant watch, and also there is a conflict between people who accept it and other people who are trying to be resistant to what the party does and so forth.”

Sage said the production has roughly 10 performers, with three roles functioning primarily as voices. One performer will make live announcements from behind the curtain, another will play Emmanuel Goldstein, the revolutionary figure portrayed as an enemy of the Party, and Sage will provide the voice of Big Brother.

The public ritual surrounding Goldstein helps demonstrate how thoroughly citizens are expected to display their loyalty.

“Everybody has to boo and hiss and show their loyalty to the party by screaming at Goldstein as he talks and so forth,” Sage said. “Everything’s got to be focused to make sure that they’re as loyal as they can be. And then even then, if you slip up, there’s a price to pay.”

The story eventually moves from constant observation into psychological coercion. Sage pointed to the threat of rats and the insistence that a prisoner accept that “two plus two equals five, not four” as examples of how the Party seeks not merely obedience but control over what people believe to be true.

Building a colorless world

The production’s physical world reflects that repression.

“It’s barren,” Sage said. “It’s basically drab because that’s the atmosphere.”

Gray tarps and a handful of doorways create the foundation of the set, with much of the action unfolding against an intentionally plain, nearly colorless environment. The major exception comes when the audience enters the world of the Inner Party, whose members enjoy privileges unavailable to ordinary citizens.

“They can actually turn off the screen for a few minutes and so forth,” Sage said. “So they show the contrast between the inner party and the outer party and the benefits they get, like drinking wine and things of that nature.”

Sage initially rehearsed the production in the guild’s classroom space before moving into Estes Park High School, where the company could begin integrating the scenery, props, lighting, and sound.

“I just try to get the basics done before we move into that space, and then the concentration is using everything, the props, set pieces, moving them around, everything like that, getting everything coordinated,” he said.

The Estes Park High School Auditorium is at 1600 Manford Ave.

Sage also sees the production as an opportunity to connect Orwell’s fictional control of information with contemporary political debates. When asked what had made the material feel particularly relevant, he pointed to what he described as attempts by the Trump administration to influence media coverage.

“The attitudes today remind me of ‘1984’ and the administration’s attempts to control the media,” Sage said. “They only want good stories, because those are the ones that he approves of. That’s the kind of thing that’s going on in the play—they’re controlling your thoughts; they control what’s news and what’s not news. If anything is contradictory, they have to rewrite everything and destroy one part and republish it as a new story.”

Those parallels, Sage said, are among the elements he hopes to emphasize rather than allowing Orwell’s world to remain safely confined to fiction.

“This, I think, is just kind of a commentary on what our future could be,” Sage said. “I think it’s just an appropriate time for this.”