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February 20, 2009
Tragic play raises questions
Story of history and morality is co-hosted by the Chutzpah! festival.
OLGA LIVSHIN
Hannah Moscovitch's play East of Berlin, which premièred at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto in the fall of 2007, raises the agonizing questions that accompany guilt, love and redemption. How does it feel to be a son of a Nazi monster? Does guilt transfer across generations? Is there such a thing as forbidden love? Is the terrible, shameful yearning to be someone else's child ever justified?
As part of the 2009 Chutzpah! festival, East of Berlin is co-presented by the Touchstone Theatre, Firehall Arts Centre and Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad. It runs at the Firehall Arts Centre Feb. 18-28.
The play tells the story of Rudi, the son of a Nazi surgeon in Auschwitz. Born in 1945, Rudi grew up in Paraguay, unaware of his father's horrible war crimes. When Rudi learns the truth at 17, it changes his life.
Unable to cope with such a terrible revelation, the young man is drowning in his hatred and revulsion towards his father. He insults and hurts his father, and even pretends to be gay – a foremost indignity for a former SS officer – but nothing is enough to change the devastating sins of the past.
In an attempt to escape his anguish, Rudi leaves home and travels to Germany, but his inherited guilt, the stigma of the swastika, follows him across the ocean. He can escape neither his blood nor his shame. When the son of a Nazi torturer falls in love with a Jewish daughter of an Auschwitz survivor, the story comes to a cusp. Where can it go from there?
East of Berlin is the story of the lost generation of German people, those who bore the guilt of their Nazi parents' inhuman deeds. Can that past be redeemed? Forgotten? Forgiven? There are no easy answers and the playwright is not looking for one. She is just telling a story, disclosing a truth, no matter how disturbing, as is a writer's mandate. Through one man's personal tragedy, she stirs up a deep psychological vortex of legacies, loyalties and betrayals.
Moscovitch's collaborators in the play, both in the original production of Tarragon Theatre and in the remount the theatre brings to Chutzpah!, include actors Diana Donnelly, Paul Dunn and Brendan Gall and director Alisa Palmer.
Palmer explained the play simply: "A young man discovers a secret about his identity and struggles to understand it and redeem himself."
The Jewish Independent had a short interview with Palmer, a well-known Canadian theatrical director and playwright, whose eclectic training includes not only theatre but also history and circus.
JI: What did you feel when you first read East of Berlin?
AP: It was haunting.
JI: What is the main message of the play? Is it relevant mostly for Jews?
AP: I don't think this is a Jewish play. There's no lesson, no message, but a story with a moral dilemma. It speaks to everyone differently.
JI: You directed the première. How does it feel to be the first director of a piece?
AP: It's a unique thrill to bring something to life with the playwright at your side.
JI: Did you have a chance to collaborate with Moscovitch? Suggest some changes or lines? What kind of a person is she?
AP: Hannah is extremely talented and very much attuned to theatre. I showed her work that the actors were doing and she would respond with changes she wanted in the form of rewrites, or we would talk and I would try to understand her and her material. The more I understood, the stronger the play became.
JI: How is success divided between a playwright and a director?
AP: I love directing, so I feel it's necessary. I work well with people, so I like to think I create my own niche and convince people I work with that I have plenty to contribute.... In my case, many of my productions are remounted and tour, and [they] often last for years, so that's as good as it gets.
JI: What kind of research did you do to direct this play?
AP: I don't really research before I direct. I do it as I go along, but my main responsibility is to understand human behavior and allow the specific situation to be communicable to an audience who has not done any research either. But I did my degree in historiography, so I read a lot of strange things, which amounts to a kind of lifestyle of research.
JI: You have an education in history. Is the play historically correct? Is it necessary for a really good piece of writing to be historically correct? How much leeway does a playwright have?
AP: I think the idea of historical accuracy might be historically inaccurate. I studied the philosophy of history, so subjectivity is more central than objectivity. And so it is with theatre.
JI: You have some circus training. Does it affect your directing style? How?
AP: I'm not sure. I think the body is as important as the mind and the two need to work together, which makes me popular with actors.
JI: How did you come to be a director; it's a pretty unusual profession?
AP: Someone said I should try it. Many people echoed the sentiment. I love actors and designers and writers and a good story, so what could be better?
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer.
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