Dictatenure: A Purchase Tragedy
- Jennifer Ward
- 3 hours ago
- 7 min read
By Tia Porter
One year after a peaceful protest resulted in 68 confirmed arrests, including five faculty members, students put together a show expressing their dissatisfaction with the administration.
At the end of the spring semester of 2024, from May 2 to May 5, students gathered in The Quad for a pro-Palestinian protest. Despite remaining peaceful, the University Police Department (UPD) responded with aggression, arresting both the students and faculty present on May 2.
As a result, the Purchase faculty voted no confidence in Purchase President Milagros Peña, who is set to retire at the end of the 2024-2025 academic school year. However, despite the time that has passed, students continue to be impacted by the events of May 2 of 2024.
"Dictatenure, or a Purchase Tragedy" was written and performed as a direct result of this discontent. As a satire and commentary on the events of May 2, it focuses on the impact of Peña’s alleged involvement in the mass arrests. While the play was almost called off, the performance ended up taking place on May 1, as scheduled. The show continued through the weekend and on the anniversary of the events that inspired it.
“'Dictatenure, or a Purchase Tragedy' is both a recollection of the violent crackdown on free speech last spring, but also a deeply silly satire about an administration many students were frustrated with,” said Lydia Harada, a junior communications major who played Professor Andy Salamander.
“With a show like this, you want a director you can confidently put your faith in, and Kat Tobits is absolutely that,” Harada added. “I had worked with her last year on 'Catharsis', a senior project play by one of my best friends, and there is nobody else I’d trust to lead us through both this script and this storm of a production process.”
For Kat Tobits, a senior theater and performance major with a directing concentration, "Dictatenure, or a Purchase Tragedy" is part of her final goodbye to Purchase. As the director and producer, Tobits worked hand in hand with Jan Marco, a junior philosophy and playwriting/screenwriting double major, to bring "Dictatenure, or a Purchase Tragedy" to life.
“One of the intentions is for students who experienced the horrors of May 2 to have some cathartic relief and be seen,” Tobits said. She added that it is important for incoming freshmen and transfers to be educated on what happened in the spring and to criticize the power structures that exist at Purchase. “People in power who have no regard or respect for those they are supposed to lead is a systematic issue not only at our school, but many colleges across the country and in our own government currently.”
“Jan, the playwright, had approached me over this past winter break to direct this production,” Tobits said. “I read the script and was immediately interested in bringing this to life. We gathered our cast, crew and creative team in the first couple of weeks of the spring semester and have had rehearsals and production meetings throughout this semester to put up this production.”
“Dictatenure, or a Purchase Tragedy” managed to balance humor with moments of genuine empathy.
“From the beginning, I knew the satiric aspect of the play was the most important,” Marco said. “To keep the balance between mockery and criticism. More than anything, as a personal piece, this was my expression of dissent. As a production, people would actually see my biggest intention was catharsis, a chance for students who went through what Kat and I did to get their 'fuck you's' out towards the administration. Hearing the crowd boo and jeer was incredibly satisfying.”
"Dictatenure, or a Purchase Tragedy" stars Jayla Field, a freshman majoring in theater and performance and minoring in video production, as Malaogros “Mally” Pena. Field has spent a large part of the semester preparing for this role.
“My role as Mally is a caricature of the real president; she’s played as a statistic, psychopathic dictator,” Field said. “And it has been one of the most fun roles to play. Kat and Jan have both said that she is kinda of like the idea of ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’ and she’s just completely unhinged.”
The audience was packed; students from every year showed up to support the play on opening night. The crowd was very responsive, booing Mally’s criticism of the students and cheering when she faced consequences. Ultimately, the cast received a standing ovation once the play ended.
“This show has been an amazing project to work on,” Field added, “and I am so grateful for Kat and Jan for giving me this opportunity to share this story. It is absolutely a story that needs to be shared, especially now.”
Field worked with a diverse cast, including Ethan Luce, Eva Howard, Sonai Duval, Lydia Harada, Daivey Reina, James David Louis and Daniel DeChristopher. While some played caricatures of faculty members, others were original characters created to guide the play.
These added characters also represent the questions Marco had while writing "Dictatenure, or a Purchase Tragedy." During the research stage, they uncovered details about Peña, including her history of supporting social justice. Learning who she was before coming to work at Purchase made Marco and Tobits wonder, "How did this happen?"
“People in positions of great power will do anything to keep that power,” Tobits said. “Even at the cost of their morality.”
Luce, a junior creative writing major, was double-cast as Protestino and Smithsome Worrysore. These characters represent two different viewpoints: Luce described Protestino as “a parody of a lot of the more militant activists” who were on campus during the spring semester.
For Worrysore, a member of the Purchase administration, the most important objective is to maintain power by any means necessary.
“He’s a Kissinger-esque figure,” Luce said, “he hooks himself up to wherever the power is and parrots the opinions of whatever boot he’s licking.”
This character represents those who have become corrupt due to their desire for control. Worrysore would be the first to throw himself in front of Mally, bending over backwards for her approval, even when this meant hurting the people below him.
“Diversity and freedom of speech are wonderful things to promote- until they aren’t benefiting you,” Luce said.
Both of Luce’s characters provided comedic relief in moments of tension, which maintained audience engagement.
Tobits and Marco made sure to cover all their bases and booked their space in the Center of Media, Film and Theater (CMFT) building over a month in advance. However, in spite of their preparation, the play came very close to being cancelled at the last minute as concerns were raised about the overlap between the opening night of "Dictatenure, or a Purchase Tragedy" opening night and Alumni Weekend.
“To be specific, we have had no public backlash so far from administration or UPD,” Tobits said. The Director of the Conservatory for Theater Arts, Rebecca Rich, “was concerned about the optics of a critical satire about the administration during a weekend where basically the conservatory will be asking alumni for donations, and she was worried that the play will have a negative impact on the conservatory as a whole, which I understand.”
“However, this was on the first day of tech week,” Tobits added, “and instead of doing our cue to cue like we were supposed to, we had to frantically look for a backup location and we were not able to cue key tech elements as we didn’t know if we would even be able to be in the space,” Tobits continued.
During the period when no one was certain if “Dictatenure, or a Purchase Tragedy” would continue as planned, the cast stuck together and prepared for the best-case scenario.
“I won't get too detailed, but it basically derailed our tech week schedule and set us back a whole day,” Marco said. “Our cast and crew decided to stay extra long, we had many late nights, and were still behind by opening night, which was actually the first run through we had with our whole crew. It was really their hard work and dedication that put this all together. They did a spectacular job and I can't begin to thank them enough.”
The show went on in the CMFT Performance Studio as the cast and crew intended. Tobits explained that key faculty in theater and performance stepped in when they heard about the disruption. Those faculty members advocated for the students' right to free speech and expression, allowing “Dictatenure, or a Purchase Tragedy” to be performed undisturbed.
“While this play is based on a real-life student protest and the themes that appear in the play center around free expression, student rights, and power structures,” Tobits said, “I never want to forget why we did the encampment last May in the first place. It was to protest the genocide that is still going on to this day, still occurring against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and to protest the school's ties to Israel, who has killed thousands of Palestinians in this horrible genocide.”
Tobits continued, “Our experience with the encampment was traumatic and real, but cannot be compared to the atrocities being committed against the Palestinian people. All of our struggles are connected, and we are not free until all of us are free.”
“Fuck UPD, fuck the Purchase Administration who approved the arrests of myself and 70+ students and faculty, and free Palestine,” Tobits said.