Camino Real

Set in an unspecified Latin American Banana Republic to comment on his own country’s potential totalitarianism, Tennessee Williams created a world where a luxury, five-star hotel is separated from an impoverished ghetto by a desiccated fountain. He imagined a time where the word brother is outlawed, where dreamers are a threat to the state, and where a person would risk and lose his life, simply for a drink of water. With chilling imagery he envisioned an oppressive regime which saw water not as a human right, but a commodity to be sold for the highest price. As corporations privatize emerging nations’ water supplies, Williams’ prescient Camino Real is more immediate than ever.