Opens in London on May 2.

The truth is out there, in that mulch of media-relayed current events, but we're not privy to it. Do any of us believe what we see on television, or really know what sort of world we live in? With luck, we'll soon be given a good idea, when Reader opens in London.

The work of Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman, Reader is a politically charged but personal play about what happens to a society when it suppresses important truths in the name of higher ideals. Although it is set in a futuristic society, it is nevertheless a patent reflection our own. The main character is a professional censor, known sinisterly as The Pope, at whose hands the texts of the day are hacked into a language palatable to the controlled, 1984-like society he lives in.

That continues until one day, when he begins work on a book that reflects his own life and forces him into a self-awakening. Dorfman says that the play was "a way of asking what would happen to a man who has spent his life suppressing the works of others if a book he was about to ban suddenly began to reveal secrets from his past and predict an anguishing future which was coming alive in front of his eyes".

Reader sprang directly from the author's experience; it began life as a short story, written in vengeance against a dictatorial approach to art and literature in Chile at the time. "It was a sort of semi-tragic joke I was playing on those who had been censoring me and other writers all through the 20th century," Dorfman says. But the story soon expanded to address wider contemporary issues. The US government's attack on Iraq has unmistakable echoes of the violent, CIA-backed end to Allende's Chile in 1973. "The play continues to be sadly relevant. The governments portrayed in it smother, manipulate and control information in the name of the highest ideals, using the fear of the populace in an ongoing 'war on terror'. Sound familiar?"

This is the first show ever to be staged at Amnesty's UK headquarters. Provocative theatre and an organisation like Amnesty might seem an odd pairing, but there's every reason to believe the charity's humanitarian message can reach a wider audience through the play. Dorfman himself is particularly happy Amnesty has chosen to host this play. "They're opening what we can hope will be a thrilling array of works with a play which demands that the audience question the world and how it's organised," he said.

In the director's chair is Frank Tamburin, fresh off the plane from the US to oversee this project. He's keen to see the underlying issues acknowledged. "We're living in a strange climate these days," he said. "Sex and violence are endemic, so is an aggressive youth culture and angry, alienating music." Tamburin's concern is that, just like Dorfman's futuristic society, ours too is clamping down on freedoms in the name of "protection"; that CCTV cameras, chips in credit cards, even Oyster cards track us everywhere we go. "We're casting about for terrorists, and there's a violent bias against wrong-doers of any sort," he said. "Look at us: two towers fell down and we're all prepared to go along with this overprotection."