Politically charged | Bruce Guthrie's 'Death and the Maiden'

Theatre director Bruce Guthrie brings 'Death and the Maiden', Ariel Dorfman's chilling exploration of justice and trauma, to life in a timely new production

ISSUE DATE: May 11, 2026

It was during his days at drama school that Bruce Guthrie, now head – theatre & films, National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai, came across Chilean playwright Ariel Dorfman’s internationally acclaimed play Death and the Maiden. “What struck me then, and still does now, is its psychological precision,” he says.

Now, Guthrie is all set to direct the play and is currently in the midst of rehearsals with actors Neil Bhoopalam, Ira Dubey and Vivek Gomber. Set in a country emerging from dictatorship, Death and the Maiden follows Paulina Salas, a former political prisoner who becomes convinced that a chance visitor is the man who once tortured her. “The play is rooted in a very specific political moment in Chile, but its questions are universal. How do societies reckon with past violence? What happens when justice is incomplete—or altogether absent? And crucially, who gets to decide what justice looks like? These are not historical questions—they are ongoing ones,” he says, adding that there’s also something deeply personal at the heart of the play: the tension between truth and belief. “In an age of competing narratives and fractured realities, that feels particularly resonant,” he adds.

Dubey, who portrays the central figure of Paulina Salas, believes that the play is timely and universal in its exploration of marriage and humanity, in the post-‘me too’ era and in light of the revelations of the Epstein files. “As a storyteller and actor, there is nothing more exciting than looking at truth and bringing an audience into a world where we are asked to confront it,” she states, while Gomber and Bhoopalam agree that this is a story that people need to watch and understand to see how conflicting ideas exist.

—Death and the Maiden will be staged from May 7 to 10 at Experimental Theatre, NCPA, Mumbai

- Ends