Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production ofEquivocation

American Voices

Bill Cain

Originally equivocation meant a way of attempting to tell the truth in the face of a false question. The original meaning can be best illustrated by using an example from World War II. If – in 1943 – you were working at 263 Prinsengracht in Amsterdam and the Gestapo came to your door and asked, “Are you hiding Anne Frank in your attic,” what would the true answer be? The literal truth? Or questioning the validity of the question – equivocating – asking yourself what they are really asking.

I am grateful to be taking the journey of Equivocation (with its extraordinary original creators) in a time when the questions being placed to us do not seem to me to be the real ones. I am grateful once again to be traveling with Shag and his wonderful company of actors, and with Garnet and his terrible aloneness, seeking the questions beneath the questions and seeking the courage to answer them honestly and with our lives.