Jonestown docudrama yields no easy answers

"The People's Temple," a new docudrama at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California, takes the lid off a powerful and anguishing history. In the opening scene, a white-gloved archivist delicately removes a choir robe from a storage box. So begins this compelling look at the Peoples Temple, a San Francisco-based congregation that spawned Jonestown, the communal settlement in Guyana. The community ended with the deaths of more than 900 residents, most by cyanide poisoning, on Nov. 18, 1978. Nearly 100 survived in Georgetown, Guyana's capital, or by fleeing in the hours and days before the calamity; hundreds more temple members remained in the United States.

Survivors have met at private gatherings and memorials in the years since. Now the public nature of the play means "we're once more engaged with the rest of the world in a way we haven't been since the immediate aftermath of the tragedy," says Garry Lambrev, a former temple member portrayed on stage.

The renewed exposure provoked anxiety in some survivors who prepared to attend the world première of "The People's Temple" (the apostrophe was added to the play's title in part to distinguish it from the church) in mid-April. They were all too familiar with seeing themselves and their loved ones depicted - in news stories, documentaries, and a made-for-TV movie - as deranged cultists who mindlessly followed a charismatic madman, the Rev. Jim Jones, to their deaths.

Jones founded the Temple in Indiana in 1955, relocated to California in 1965, and later established headquarters in San Francisco. It was there that the temple, dedicated to principles of social justice, grew to 3,000 members. With its social-service programs, growing political influence, and a powerful community spirit, the temple seemed poised to fulfill its vision of creating a new world. Jonestown was conceived and built during the 1970s as a multiracial socialist paradise.

Along with the good came the bad, however. Lawsuits and press inquiry into practices within the temple - beatings, the separation of families, faked healings - prompted a swift exodus of 1,000 members to Guyana in 1977 and '78. Continued abuse and poor living conditions there led to an investigative visit, in November 1978, by Rep. Leo Ryan, concerned relatives, and media representatives. Several disaffected residents decided to leave with Ryan; as the delegation prepared to board a plane, they were ambushed and several were shot to death. Shortly afterward, Jones called residents to the central pavilion, where a vat of cyanide-laced Kool-Aid had been prepared. More than 900 residents, including hundreds of children, died by murder and suicide. Because of limited eyewitness accounts and spotty forensic evidence, the exact nature of the deaths is still contested.

Page: 1 | 2