A Bright Room Called Day --- Week 4 Rehearsals

A week off in the middle of a rehearsal process is not easy for a director to cope with. We have been building momentum on the show over the past few weeks and now (suddenly) everything will halt for a week before we pick up and start again. Sunday was a run-through of Act II (transitions and all). Thankfully, the cast pulled together and performed a relatively smooth run. Seeing Act II on its feet was definitely a reassuring sight leading up to this week's Spring Break and time away from the show for everyone.

Seeing Act II in a single piece demonstrated that we are definitely heading in the right direction. While Act I moves along at a brisk clip supported by Kushner's wit and an air of mystery and playfulness, Act II is poignant and harsh as each of the characters responds to the burning of the Reichstag and Hitler's appointment to chancellorship of Germany. I am extremely eager to see it all put together. The actors are also ready to play their arcs from Act I to Act II. Because of the play's "interruptions" the actors are provided with the additional challenge of maintaining momentum and energy in their performances while periodically stepping "out of character" to address the audience or sit as spectators to the action.

We are also at the point in the process where other outside elements are coming into the production. I've been busily choosing music, finding appropriate historical images for the slide shows, and working with the designers to create a cohesive vision for Kushner's world. These details can help to enhance the audience's experience and response to the production. I have pinned down what I want the final moment of the piece to look and feel like . . . always a good sign.

Along the same lines, we have been working on promoting the show more aggressively in the past week. I have been fortunate enough to (once again) be working with Nathan Langner for Bright Room's poster design. We wanted to create a striking image that blended together the historical and human drama of the production. Nathan is great to collaborate with and I feel that he has put together something artistically compelling that supports the production's vision.

And so with a week to catch our collective breath we will meet again on Sunday for our first full run-through of the show!

A Bright Room Called Day --- Week 3 Rehearsals

Having started this week's rehearsals with a run of Act I provided a stark contrast with the mood and trajectory of Act II. The run was an effective demonstration of how far we've come in a couple of weeks . . . and a reminder of how far we still have to go. Pictured on the left Husz and Agnes (Dan Mueller and Victoria Hamilton) have become isolated from each other through circumstance and Agnes' choices.

One of the challenges in producing a piece of "Epic Theatre" is the use of short scenes punctuated by (as Kushner describes) "interruptions." It is tempting to get lost in the story's emotional content. The human drama is extremely compelling, however, we must strike balance between the play's emotion and its intellect in order to keep the production from becoming a cathartic experience rather than an impetus for social change. In Brechtian fashion, Kushner seems to be asking for application of the play's lessons so we are not utterly doomed to repeat history. While we can do our best to iron out these complicated transitions in early rehearsals, the fact is we're not really going to know if things work until adding the show's technical elements. At this point, I find the uncertainty a bit scary . . . and a bit thrilling. This is one of those wonderful leaps of faith one must make in the act of play-making. In terms of the play's emotional arc, Act I is all about establishing the relationships and the subtext between the characters so that we earn the poignancy in Act II. So . . . with that in mind we tackle Act II.

The tone is completely different as the relationships change and become fractured by the growing political tensions surrounding the characters. In working the scenes in fragments this week, we made some nice discoveries about the characters and found some intriguing questions to pursue in the coming weeks.

First of all, in working the Agnes/Die Alte scenes, we discovered some interesting connections between Agnes and the Her Swetts character. In Act I, Agnes tells Baz, "I feel no connection, no kinship with most of the people I see." This foreshadows Herr Swett's assertion of "irreconcilable separation from Joy." This disconnect with humanity and ultimate focus on the self draws together Swetts, Agnes, and Die Alte in a way that they are separate from the other characters in the story.

With that in mind, blocking Act II became about drawing the other characters together as Agnes pushes them away. Baz, Paulinka, Husz, Gotchling, and even Malek all reach out to Agnes and give her the opportunity to exercise her humanity to grab a hold of the "twig" that may save her. With each opportunity, however, Agnes withdraws further into herself, fearful of losing the familiar, the comfort, and the life she has grown accustomed to. Pictured on the left, Baz says good-bye to an unresponsive Agnes (Matt Holland and Victoria Hamilton).

Act II also presents the cast with the challenge of allowing their characters to be impacted by their circumstances. They all (except Agnes) change. Agnes, as we are discovering, doesn't change so much as she allows her fear and shortcomings as a human being to be exposed. Baz and Paulinka undergo the greatest changes in Act II. Baz, after a severe existential crisis, allows himself to care more deeply, to reach out significantly to his friends, to value his own humanity rather than to treat everything as a game of intellect and witty repartee. Although it is difficult for Paulinka, she realizes the value of her own soul. She is who she is: ambitious and tough. But she does also have the capacity for empathy and courage (as much as she hates to admit to it). Act II also reveals more humanity within Gotchling and Husz. For Gotchling, it's admitting to her own vulnerability and accepting the fact that she cannot save Agnes. Husz is in a similar situation of being forced to let go and act selfishly.

Another interesting point we discovered this week is that during the course of Act II, Baz, Husz, Gotchling, and Paulinka all pull together and become more "real" with each other on a deeper level while Agnes becomes an increasingly isolated figure. Pictured on the left Husz and Paulinka (Dan Mueller and Arianne Jacques) toast Paulinka's triumphant act of bravery. While in Act I, Husz seems frustrated with Paulinka's hardened ambition, here they are much warmer with each other after having been drawn together through a shared experience.

Tonight we will see Act II together in order before working these moments of parting in more depth through out the week.

A Bright Room Called Day --- Week 2 Rehearsals

As is common in the theatre, rehearsal space comes at a premium. We are usually lucky enough to be able to rehearse in the space where we will eventually perform the play- however, this week, due to scheduling conflicts we had to find an alternative room. So . . . banished to the basement Green Room (in the bowels of Withycombe Hall). . . we set out to work Act I.

For me, play-making is a process of putting the piece together, tearing it apart, breaking it down, working it, making discoveries, asking questions, putting it back together again, and doing the process over and over until clarity of communication is (hopefully) achieved. All good plays offer a group of collaborators puzzles, challenges, and little mysteries to solve- and Kushner's text is blessedly full of these delightful enigmas. One thing that makes theatre so exciting for me is that put in the hands of a different director, group of designers, and performers the production of any given script will be vastly different because the human variables involved in textual interpretation. Making these discoveries together with an inquisitive cast and crew is always a rewarding part of the process for me.

This week was all about making discoveries about the characters and their relationships with each other in Act I. Agnes is a particularly difficult character because she is so very frustratingly human in her humor, her fears, her befuddlement with the events happening in her world, and her maddening complacency. For this play to work and communicate Kushner's ideas effectively, the audience must identify with Agnes and finds themselves in her. This is Agnes' story. This is emphasized in the play's meta-narrative by Baz in the "Prologue" scene. He suggests as a way to start the New Year properly, that the friends compose a story together. Characteristically, Paulinka attempts to take the spotlight first, but Baz stops her, "Please! This is Agnes' party. Agnes' apartment. Agnes should begin. Begin, Agnes." Pictured on the left, Baz listens as Gotchling tells her thread of the narrative.

Here, Kushner, through Baz, gives Agnes the opportunity to speak up for herself and establishes Agnes as the center of the events. We discovered this week, however, that although Agnes is the center of the group of friends, she does very little and changes very little through the narrative. We set out to figure out why, to define some of the intricacies of Agnes' relationships with her friends, and to build a group of friends that the audience likes and can relate to. I would love during the intermission for the audience to feel like, What a great group of friends or That reminds me of my friends.

We had a chance this week to build upon the romantic relationship between Agnes and Husz- who really seem like a rather odd couple. I kept asking myself (and Dan and Victoria)- What's the attraction there? Other questions that came up this week revolved around finding ways to foreshadow where the relationships go to in Act II without being heavy-handed. Each person that interacts with Agnes serves a different function in her life, and she seems to be a different person with each of them. Agnes molds herself to suit the personalities of her friends: she is idealistic for Gotchling, gossipy and competitive with Paulinka, comforting and sensitive to Baz, and witty and flirtatious with Husz. In the end, it seems, we are left with a rather inactive protagonist with very little sense of self. She sees what's happening in the world, she enjoys small pleasures of her life, but she lacks the capacity to risk. She confesses to Baz, "I'm overwhelmed. I feel no connection, no kinship with most of the people I see." And so she eventually draws into herself.

Kushner has given us in his script the gift of very complicated and very human characters with nuanced relationships. They are likable and, I believe, a group of friends an audience can and should relate to. The more time I spend with this witty group of intellectuals, the more I like them. Which, I hope, will eventually make the events in Act II all the more powerful. One of the most interesting historical questions about the Holocaust that has always intrigued me is: How could this have happened? What went wrong with these modern, educated, and artistic German people to allow a man like Hitler to seize power and control and to enact the horrors of war and genocide? Kushner, it seems, suggests an answer: Just like this. And these people were just like you and me. As Husz says so eloquently:

"This Age wanted heroes.
It got us instead:
carefully constructed, but
immobile.
Subtle
unfit
to take up
the burden of the times.
It happens.
A whole generation of washouts.
History says stand up,
and we totter and collapse,
weeping, moved, but not
sufficient."

Other fun discoveries and challenges for the week included learning the tune to "Internationale" (thanks so much, Billy Bragg). On the left Gotchling (McKenzie Miller) sings her devolted Communist heart out while Husz (Dan Mueller) and Agnes (Victoria Hamilton) look on, vodka in hand.

And so we press on! Two more sections to work before we move on to the run. Looking forward to seeing Act I worked and on its feet on Tuesday and being back in the Lab Theatre.

A Bright Room Called Day --- Week 1 Rehearsals

After a brief respite from our first read-through in January, we gathered together again as a cast on Monday, February 22 for our second read-through (complete with snacks). Hearing the voices of the actors is extremely helpful to me as a director. Before casting, I must visualize the play on the page in order to develop a concept and make choices about characters completely based upon the text. After the casting decisions are made, however, hearing actors breathe life into the words helps me further shape the show and draw out the nuance because their voices inspire new and clearer choices. A couple of times during the first read-through I thought, "Ah-ha! That's what that character means" or "that's something I didn't realize about the character before." This is one of the most exciting parts about being involved in a collaborative process.

Ideally, I like to have space between the first and second read-throughs. During this time, things can marinate in my brain as I approach blocking rehearsals. I had that delightful luxury this time around. I made more discoveries during this reading and hearing the actors helped me solidify some of my directorial choices. One of the challenges of this play is striking the right balance between the "theatrical" or "Brechtian" elements that privilege social thesis and action above character and narrative and presenting a compelling story. Kushner writes what he calls "interruptions" into his text in order to break up the narrative. In many ways, Kushner's style and plays pay homage to the work of Bertolt Brecht. Within this context, the interruptions can remind the audience that the narrative is just a fictional story, but the issues it presents are real and require action. Brecht does not want his audience to respond emotionally, but intellectually to his work; for him theatre is about inspiring action, not enabling catharsis.

After this first week, Act I was blocked. The cast has been wonderfully focused on the work. This first photo is from the "Prologue" scene where the group of friends celebrates New Years' Eve in Agnes' apartment. Pictured left to right are Matt Holland (Baz), McKenzie Miller (Gotchling), Dan Mueller (Husz), and Arianne Jacques (Paulinka) around the kitchen table. A couple of things we discovered immediately in these rehearsals was how much this group of friends drinks together- in nearly every scene where they discuss politics, they have wine and/or vodka at their sides.



In "Scene 2" Agnes and Paulinka discuss Paulinka's therapy sessions with Dr. Bloom and Agnes' recent and growing interest in the Communist Party. Agnes exclaims: "Paulinka, these are the most exciting days of my life." Here, pictured left to right, are Arianne Jacques (Paulinka) and Victoria Hamilton (Agnes). I usually block and work plays one act at a time. Right now we are only focused on Act I and establishing the friendships and characters. It's crucial that the audience really like and identify with the characters in Act I, so that we earn the pay-off in Act II. Upwards and onwards!!!

A Bright Room Called Day --- Concept Information

THEATRE AND RE-MEMBERING THE HOLOCAUST

The Oregon State University Holocaust Memorial Week has a history of including a theatrical performance along with the series of lectures and guest speakers. Past productions include The Diary of Anne Frank, Just One More Dance, and Kindertransport. These theatre events enhance the Memorial Week by providing another means of communicating the Holocaust. Theatre as a medium offers a unique means of going beyond remembering the history and events surrounding the Holocaust to re-membering them, literally enacting them and embodying them on a public stage. Holocaust plays can serve as powerful and thought-provoking gestures to encourage the audience to not just remember but to re-member this history.

In the 1999 essay for American Theatre, "Expressing the Inexpressible," Rachel Samantha Rebetz wrote of Holocaust theatre that "a respectful silence may seem more appropriate, but how can it help us remember what happened, what can happen, what is still happening? Art - including theatre - keeps the Holocaust present in the minds of those who did not experience it." An ever-growing genre of Holocaust drama can serve the history, the survivors, and the victims in the way Rebetz suggests. While all Holocaust dramas have the potential to re-member the Holocaust, different plays enact the events, the message, and the audience's responsibility in different ways and through different means. An autobiographical survivor play such as Charlotte Delbro's poetic narrative Who Will Carry the Word? is a vastly different gesture of remembrance than Leah Goldberg's Zionist neo-Gothic romance Lady of the Castle or Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett's dramatization of The Diary of Anne Frank.

A Bright Room Called Day tells another side of the Holocaust altogether. Kushner blends history with fiction and re-members the fears, hypocrisies, and human failings that led to the rise of Hitler in depicting a group of likable, but ultimately flawed, idealistic German artists and activists.

THE CONCEPT

As with any art form, play-making begins with an idea or a concept that informs how and why the story is being told. A Bright Room Called Day engages a variety of questions and themes through its narrative and Epic Theatre style including those of personal responsibility, fear in the face of danger, hypocrisy, and failed idealism. The plot centers around five major characters confronted with the crumbling Weimar Republic: Agnes, Husz, Gotchling, Paulinka, and Baz.

Agnes Eggling is a middle-class bit-part actress spending her life in the company of the people she cares about. Agnes is kind and well-liked by the friends who frequent her apartment. In the first scene, amidst a New Year's Eve celebration, the others characters toast "To Agnes! Good-hearted and brave!" As the year passes, however, things change for Agnes due to her inability to commit to a cause, to take a stand, or to truly risk something important. Agnes, like many Germans living during the rise of Hitler, is not a bad person. She doesn't comply and join the Nazi Party and even, for a time, flirts with the notion of resisting through activism with the KPD. In the end, however, Agnes is one of many bystanders who saw the social changes, knew of the construction of concentration camps, and did nothing to prevent it for fear of losing (in her case) a really great apartment. "I'm not a fool. I know what's coming will be bad, but not unlivable, and not eternally, and when it's over, I will have clung to the least last thing, which is to say, my lease. And you have to admit, it's a terrific apartment."

Vealtninc Husz is Agnes' live-in lover. A careworn Hungarian one-eyed camera man, Husz is a disillusioned Trotskyite. Having given an eye to the cause in 1919, Husz has become at once cynical and sentimental about the possibilities of a communist revolution. His passions have moved from the battlefield to an interest in developing propaganda art to promote ideas and change. Like other characters in the play, however, Husz is more talk than action. He idealizes Trotsky and Dziga-Vertov, but ultimately sees the futility of action and the inability of most people to act in the face of tyranny. "This Age wanted heroes. It got us instead: carefully constructed, but immobile."

Annbella Gotchling is an idealistic communist artist and activist. Passionate for her politics, she sees a dedication to the Party as the answer to the growing turmoil in Germany. She frequently appeals to her group of friends to join up and chastises Husz for his cynicism. Of the core group, she is the last to leave and offers Agnes an avenue of escape and resistance, if only she will have the courage to do so. "You're very fond of regrets, Agnes, but the time for regretting is gone. I need very much to be proud of you."

Paulinka Erdnuss, a rising star in the German film industry, is completely self-aware and self-interested and makes no apologies for her cold ambition and desire for success. Of the characters in the play, Paulinka and Baz change the most. Paulinka fully believes that she will do whatever she needs, include make pro-Nazi propaganda films, to survive and thrive in Hitler's Germany. Late in the play, however, when she sees a friend in trouble, Paulinka discovers a selfless courage she never knew she possessed.

Gregor Bazwald (Baz) is a witty "Sunday anarchist" homosexual who works for the Institute of Human Sexuality. Clever and charming, he shares a similar self-awareness as Paulinka. He wavers between a keen sensitivity about mortality and humanity and a lackadaisical attitude about political institutions and life. In most cases, Baz reacts to the horror of his time with clever quips and deflects his fears, but through a powerful chance encounter, he rediscovers his own humanity.

Each character in the play represents a different moral quandary of action against or compliance with a destructive political system. Kushner's characters are all flawed and tend towards selfishness when placed in a threatening situation. The moral ambiguity helps to foreground the politics of the piece and emphasizes the questions: how could something like the Holocaust happen? And how desperate did people have to be in order to allow Hitler to take over? According the Kushner's view, not everyone was desperate. They were, instead, clever, charming, self-centered, and scared.

This production will emphasize the theatricality of the piece. While based on a historical time and place, the characters' stories are fictional. This is not realism and the play is peppered with moments of ambiguity and brushes with the supernatural. Playing up the Brechtian elements such as Kushner's use of slides and placards help to break up the narrative structure and foreground the play's politics rather than focusing upon the characters' emotions.

A Bright Room Called Day --- General Information

In conjunction with Oregon State University's 2010 Holocaust Memorial week (April 12-15) OSU Theatre will present Tony Kushner's A Bright Room Called Day in the Lab Theatre (Withycombe 147) on April 14-17 at 7:30 p.m. and April 18 at 2:00 p.m.

THE PLAY
Written in 1985, Kushner’s historical drama depicts the lives of a group of middle-class artists and activists living in Berlin between 1932 and 1933. Over the space of a single year in the apartment of Agnes Eggling, a young bit-part actress, the characters face rise of Hitler and fascism and the crumbling of the Weimar Republic. Confronted with the growing tyranny of Nazi control, each character must choose how to respond to the political upheaval that tests friendships and moral convictions. Kushner offers a rich and witty narrative about the way that the personal and the political collide.

A Bright Room Called Day was originally workshopped in New York City in 1985 directed by Kushner. It premiered in San Francisco in 1987 at the Eureka Theatre and was produced again as part of the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1991.


THE PLAYWRIGHT
Tony Kushner, best known for his Pulitzer Prize winning play (1992-1993) Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, was born in New York City July 16, 1956. He attended Columbia University and received a BA in Medieval Studies in 1978. In graduate school at NYU he studied directing until 1984. Some of his better-known plays include the epic two-part Angels in America, A Dubbuk or Between Two Worlds, Homebody/Kabul, and Caroline or Change. He co-wrote the screenplay for Steven Spielberg's Munich in 2005 and is currently developing a film on the life of President Lincoln. He married his boyfriend, Mark Harris in 2003 and they were the first gay couple to be listed in the New York Times' "Vows" section.


KUSHNER'S STYLE
Kushner's politics live and breathe through his work. Angels in America, for example, articulates the complex intricacies of the AIDS epidemic in the late 1980s and addresses how the personal and political overlap. His style is characteristically postmodern; he frequently disrupts narrative, blends the historical with the literary, shifts perspectives, foregrounds his politics, and presents an ambiguous view of reality. In one scene of A Bright Room Called Day, for example, Husz conjures the Devil into Agnes' Berlin apartment. Whether the Devil's appearance actually happens or is merely a symbolic act is never really clear. Similarly in Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, Harper and Prior encounter each other outside the boundaries of reality, she in a drug-induced hallucination and he in a vivid fever dream. They refer to this chance dream-like meeting as the "threshold of revelation." Powerfully theatrical moments such as these draw attention to key issues and themes in Kushner's plays.

This strong use of theatricality is reminiscent of Bertolt Brecht's Epic Theatre and A-effect. The disruption of a narrative structure tending towards realism reminds the audience that the purpose of the play transcends entertainment and is meant to inspire thoughtful discourse and action. In A Bright Room Called Day, the plot is punctuated by short scenes and the disruption of placard-like slides addressing the plays' historical context. Kushner blends a fictional story about fictional characters with the harsh reality that led to Hitler's rise. It is no accident that Agnes, Baz, Paulinka, Husz, and Gotchling are witty and identifiable characters. As the plot of the play progresses, each character faces his or her own hypocrisies. It is easy to stand up to tyranny when one's life is not in danger. The presence of the slides contextualizes the play's issues and demonstrates how "good" people can allow evil to happen through the world because of fear and complacency.