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Read an edited selection of the interview with Director of New Work Charles Haugland and Playwright Paula Vogel.
"The truth of the matter is that we all have to support each other specifically when it is not our lifestyle. That's where the play comes from."
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Haugland: Can you tell us a little bit about the artistic journey that you went on as you developed this play going from “I want to collaborate with Rebecca Taichman on a play about the God of Vengeance” to “really, I want to write a play about today and about issues that are still facing our country and hurting our country.”
Vogel: I had already pitched an idea to Yale Rep, and I was starting to collect the research. I was kind of organizing it in my mind. Rebecca and Bill Rauch, who was the artistic director of Oregon Shakespeare Festival called me out of the blue. Oftentimes an image comes very early on. You just see something in your head. It makes us sound a little schizophrenic, but you see something, and I saw something while we were on the phone. What I saw was dusty, raggedy figures rising in an attic. I looked at the clothing, and I knew that it was Poland. I knew it was 1943, and once I saw that I couldn’t get it out of my head. I actually said yes by the end of the phone conversation because I saw it so clearly. During the transfer to Broadway there was this kind of wonderful sense of wanting some kind of restitution. It was very clear from the moment we started working there was a resonance in terms of hate speech, censorship, antisemitism, hatred against religious groups, and violence in terms of the LBTQ community. Everything we're in right now happened in 1922 and 1923.
Haugland: What I personally love about the play is how it imagines the lives of the actresses who played the roles of Rifkele and Manke. Can you talk about finding those characters and how you knew that was part of the story?
I don't want to tell fairy tales to a younger generation. I want to tell stories about women who actually existed. I want to not only tell the story about women who existed, but the story of men who loved those women, supported and nurtured those women. When I look at my life the support I got from my brother, the men in my life, my women friend who married and made me godmother to their children. They taught their children to support my love which is astonishing. I realize now—I mean, today I was thinking, "This is sort of—I feel like my brother's not here to tell us that story, but we know on every issue whether it is homophobia, antisemitism, anti-Muslim, ridiculousness, hideousness, the truth of the matter is that we all have to support each other specifically when it is not our lifestyle, right? That's where the play comes from.
Haugland: What's it like to come back to the play on the other side of Broadway. Not many people get to see the definitive staging or the original staging again on the other side of that, and what has it been like returning to it?
Vogel: This is the thrill about being a playwright.The actors who have been with it for the start are finding completely different things. I mean, it's an entire journey. The people who you would never know weren't with it from the start, but are here now are bringing out all of these new notes so that—you know, I was saying to Rebecca, "Do you sort of stand in the back of the room and go, 'Oh! So that's what that scene means."I mean, you only discover it now. I have to say there is an overwhelming thrill about being a playwright in that tonight I know it's played—they're probably down with the curtain in Pittsburgh. It's very important to me that this play is playing in Pittsburgh. I think tonight it's running in Montreal.They're doing the dress rehearsal in Philadelphia. This is a kind of enormous gift of the theater that other artists are just making new worlds. It's the artists who are in it that make the new worlds. It's great to be in Boston because there's a portion of my very close friends and family that live up here, so it's really fantastic to be here with this.
Audience member: Lemml is one of the few characters that is fully invented. How did you think of using him as a framework for the play? How did that come about?
Vogel: Well first of all, I love stage managers. I do. I started as a stage manager and realized I don’t have the nerves for it. But stage managers are the conductors. They are the heart and soul of the production. And of course, the other thing is, just a little homage to Thornton Wilder. You know, we could call this “Our Shtetl” in a way. As a young person, I had my adolescent kind of Oedipal withdrawal from Thornton Wilder thinking, “Oh he’s so sentimental,” which he’s not at all. And then to go back and each time be astonished by his writing and the way that he portrays community in not a sentimental or nostalgic way at all. But it’s interesting that Thornton Wilder thought of himself as the stage manager and performed the stage manager. Because I think, and I’m just gonna say this and I hope Tappy Wilder will forgive me. I actually think that Thornton Wilder was the last gay writer in America who retained his privacy. And I think that thinking of a stage manager as someone who observes, but does not actively participate, which is not true actually. That’s how he looks at the stage manager. So, that’s my little Mr. Wilder valentine.
Audience memeber: What are the joys and troubles of being a playwright?
Vogel: I actually didn’t say I was a writer for a very long time. But I think that’s also generational for me as a woman. What are the joys? The joys of playwrighting are incredible. When you get to stand backstage or stand in the rehearsal room and realize the incredible artists are saying your words but making them better. Do you want to do something you love? That’s the question. How many of us get to do something we love? I hope we fight for ourselves. I hope we realize that people came to this country voluntarily and that’s why this is an extraordinary place. And we’ve got to fight for people around us as well as ourselves. I was just talking with one of the actors, and you know he’s like, “Oh my gosh. He’s exploring so much!” And you know, I feel terrible because I’m there saying, “Oh by the way, this happens in the play. Can I tell you what actually happened in Poland at that point?” And it’s like maybe I should be a little light right now. But he said, “Oh my god. This play doesn’t lighten up.” And I said, “yes it does, or it will, we have a chance for the play to lighten up in 2020.” That’s the next act.