The Day My Director Gave Me The Weirdest Order I Ever Received… And I Fulfilled It

I acted at a play almost two decades ago called “Blindness.” Yes, it was an adaptation of José Saramago’s bestseller, a beautiful story — and very heavy, too.

Much of the plot takes place inside an abandoned asylum, where the blind — ordinary people who “got a mysterious illness” and stopped seeing — are hospitalized and need to fight to survive. Between one and another wave of new blinds, a group comes from prison. The bandits, realizing the situation in which they found themselves, began to take advantage of their total lack of moral principles. They entrench themselves in one of the dormitories, arm themselves with wood sticks and iron pipes, and steal all the food delivered by the guards. The rest of the people are left with nothing.

The bad guys then say their price. First, they want everything that the so-called “normal” people have of value: watches, jewelry, wedding rings, money. All this results in a single bargain for food. And then the new “duty” is set: women.

A collective rape happens, then: women from “normal” families, with and without the authorization of their husbands, go to the bandits’ dormitory to “serve” them in exchange for food. And it was in creating this scene that I received the most absurd order of my life.

At that moment, I was playing one rapist. The scene took place in a small space, perhaps ten square meters, with a massive grid in front. We were four rapists with…