My View on the Play of Tape by Jose Rivera

The play of Tape causes me to think deeply, although it very simple, the simple setting which only includes a boring small room and a large reel-to-reel tape recorder, and the simple characters who are two men, even they have not their names.

The plot is also simple, which launches in the two men’s dialogs. At the beginning, I thought the ‘person’ was put under house arrest, because he was limited some of the personal freedom and the ‘attendant’ was friendly to him. Then, I was shocked by the men’s situation, because both Person and Attendant were not allowed to have a name, confidant, confessor, friend, even their dreams were forbidden. As the dialogs develops, I thought they perhaps were engaged in a very special work, such as CIA, spy or some highly secret job. Finally, I found I was wrong, the Person just was forced to accept his proper penalty for his lies before.

How can his lies was accumulated to ten thousand boxes of tape? Does he never tell the truth in his life? On my view, he must be a politician, due to his occupation, he has to lie all the time and has no choice. And why the Attendant has suffered such counter-humanity job? Maybe he had lied a lot before as same as politicians’.

Does the play take place in purgatory, or is it just a nightmare? Anyway, I would hope that is realistic. That will alert peoples to always be honest to his promise, his actions and his own thought.