A senior military coalition official said as many as 40 people were killed in the attack, but said it was his belief that the attack was against a foreign fighters' safe house.

A coalition official said in a written statement that coalition forces conducted a military operation against a suspected foreign fighter's safe house in the open desert, 85 km southwest of Husaybah, and 25 km from the Syrian border.

"During the operation, coalition forces came under hostile fire and close air support was provided.”

– CNN Report from Baghdad on May 20, 2004

Figaro is a revolutionary, an intelligent man intent on changing his circumstances in the face of an imminent power. Mozart and DaPonte shifted their focus away from the most incendiary aspects of the source material to appease the censors of the time, but while some of the text has been eradicated, Figaro’s character has been left largely intact. With this production, my goal is to reveal the complex revolution that is brewing within each of the characters by setting the domestic drama in the midst of a very real armed conflict.

YANKEE DOODLE DANDY.

America has cast her shadow on the concept of freedom since the bloody revolutionary war. Beaumarchais, with a personal resume uncannily similar to that of Figaro’s in the Barber of Seville, had an active personal interest in the blood-soaked battlefields in America. He was supplying a huge numbers of weapons to the insurgents throughout the same period that he was writing his play. (In 1795, the US government agreed that Beaumarchais’ company was still owed 2,228,000 French francs for the arms supplied!) His willingness to extend that much credit to the revolutionary army is no small testament to his fundamental belief in their cause.

Since then, America has been in the business of exporting its way of life to millions of others, often with tragic results. This linking of Figaro to the Americans is just as evident today as it was at the premiere in 1786. This production picks up the story in a small border town in Iraq called Siviglia where a “regime change” is underway.

VICTORS WRITE THE HISTORY.

It is impossible to know who each of these characters really are. We are allowed into the local culture not through native insight or first-hand knowledge, but rather through the prying (and spying) lens of the TV camera, digital photos on the internet, and satellite phone calls from the battlefield. These descriptions are suspect at best.

Figaro	An Iraqi insurgent
Susanna	His fiancé. Strong links to terrorist organization
Count Almaviva	Local “warlord,” and possible ally to the coalition
Rosina Almaviva	A wife of the Count. May have knowledge of enemy movement
Cherubino	A young recruit with military training
Dr. Bartolo	Fundamentalist leader and legal expert
Marcellina	A widow from a neighboring village
Antonio	An informer
Don Basilio	A local musician
Don Curzio	Ex-Baathist party functionary who reads and writes well
Barbarina	One of 40 civilian casualties

Figaro and Susanna haven’t ever had an easy life, but the situation seems a little easier to manipulate recently as the whole political climate has changed. Figaro tries to carefully balance his ideology with the facts presented around him.

Count Almaviva, however, seems more nervous than ever. Will he continue to wield the same power as before? What is the prospect for the future? His wife, Rosina, with little contact with the outside world other than her satellite television, is confused by the events unfolding around and could desperately use some more love and attention from her once tender husband. What will her place be once the “regime” has changed?

To our cast, it seems like the older you are in this post-Hussein Iraq, the more the uncertainty really bothers you. Dr. Bartolo, known to everyone in the hillside town of Siviglia, is so passionate in his vengeance against the unfulfilled obligations of Figaro, that he seems ready to make the ultimate sacrifice of a suicide bombing. The vendetta will be his, one way or another. Marcellina, however, no longer required to wear the most restrictive garments initially seems reluctant to assert herself as a woman in public, but soon lets her true feelings about men, women and war be known to everyone. Dons Curzio and Basilio take on a nefarious air as documents are destroyed and gossip – often with life and deaths consequences – trades at a premium.

Cherubino, having always expected a military career without any of the blood on his own hands is suddenly confronted by the very real possibility of an armed attack. Anxious about his future prospects, he wastes no time with the eager young Barbarina.

WAR IS HELL.

As the journee folle unfolds, each of the characters goes about dealing with his or her personal, human-scaled drama against the oppressive conditions of American occupation forces. Viewing the ever-present foreign “liberators” with equal amounts of fear and skepticism, they have little choice but to live their lives as best they can in the face of enormous obstacles. Love, betrayal, heartache and forgiveness are felt perhaps even more strongly in the shadow of the uncertainty that is, for all of us, the future.

MEET THE CAST.

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