Berenger feels like life is on top of him. He even questions if we - that being human beings - exist. This is HUGE. What on earth has driven him to say that? Well, originally his cause of apathy and 'univolvement' in life is due to his boring office job - the bourgeois life being heavily criticized by the playwright, Eugene Ionesco.
But my vision of the play is that of the period of assimilation and integration, so Berenger's (whom I would have an Aboriginal actor play) cause of apathy and general discontent will be that of the destruction of his self-identity. My Berenger was born a half-caste child and was taken from his family to live with a new white family. He grew up on a farm as a stable-hand - that being the only job he and most Aboriginal men could get. ACTUALLY, he reminds me very much of Bennelong (1764?-1813).
12/5/11
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The reason he reminds me of Bennelong is because Berenger drinks to escape life, and Bennelong, after being assimilated into white-European society acquired a taste for alcohol (a gentile way of saying, he became a bit of a drunk himself). Bennelong was friends with a white-cultured Governor Arthur Phillip - Berenger is also friends with a cultured man (who even advises Berenger to become cultured) named Jean.
These are just a couple of similarities I see between Bennelong and 'my' Berenger.
24/5/11
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