- Operation Halima,
- 2004
- 6 male - 3 female
Playwright: Theodore Tsapakidis
- A theatre near the border, still operating while the country is at war, is commandeered by a television crew to stage an interview with a prisoner of war. The theatre manager knows nothing of the arrangement, the electrician is absent, the production assistant anxiously tries to organise everything, the cameraman stands ready, and the journalist strategically orchestrates the proceedings. The prisoner arrives under the escort of a sergeant. A soldier acting as an interpreter completes the group. Outside the theatre, the war rages on, while the prisoner talks incessantly without anyone understanding a word he says. Meanwhile, the theatre manager grows increasingly anxious for the interview to end so that she can prepare the theatre for the evening’s performance. Tension mounts, and the sergeant becomes violent. The escalating situation leads to the prisoner’s death. But the interview must go on. Everything is therefore rearranged to make the dead man appear alive, under the journalist’s direction. The interview is completed, with one small problem: there was no tape in the camera. After the initial shock, the journalist decides to shoot the interview again, but rigor mortis has now set in. He persuades the theatre’s leading actress to play the prisoner, and the interview is successfully completed. The team celebrates. Gradually, everyone leaves, and the sergeant departs, taking the actress with him in the prisoner’s place. In Operation Halima, the characters lose their bearings and roles are reversed amid comic chaos. Two complementary institutions of power—television and the military, both agents of authority and coercion—exchange functions: television becomes a mechanism of surveillance and punishment, while the military becomes a mechanism for producing spectacle. Note: Operation Halima draws its inspiration from interviews with American prisoners of war broadcast on Iraqi television during the first days of the Gulf War.