stage matters / By William Kowinski

The Political Stage

‘Between Two Winters’ looked to reawaken our sense of tragedy

(April 24, 2008)  The theatre of politics is pretty obvious in this presidential campaign year, but politics in theatre — that is, political and social issues of current concern as subject matter — is also especially evident on North Coast stages in 2008.

Several plays written in another time encouraged reflection on pertinent issues of today — and were likely chosen with that in mind. The year began with Marat/Sade at NCRT, which dealt with political violence, totalitarian repression and the gap between rich and poor. Twelve Angry Men at Ferndale Rep reminded us of fragile principles in our justice system, and the folly of discarding them. Dell’Arte revived The Golden State, which also touches upon economic disparities as well as perennial cultural issues, and North Coast Prep presented The Crucible, reminding us of the contagion of fear, especially when it is manipulated for political and economic gain.

Now Ferndale Rep is doing a musical that has the distinction of leading to several Supreme Court decisions concerning censorship and political speech. Today’s younger audiences for Hair may be a little baffled by some of the issues of central importance in the story, such as the major plot point of burning a draft card, and all the fuss about … hair. Both had immense symbolic importance in the ‘60s, and caused outrage and violence in the public sphere, and within families. Still, this play’s relevance to current issues of war, protest and repression are obvious, unfortunately.

Other current social and political issues were clearly on the minds of second-year students of the Dell’Arte International School’s MFA Ensemble in the piece they created and presented for the first time last weekend.

Between Two Winters was the result of an eight-week process that began with students studying the nature of tragedy (Aristotle’s Poetics applied to Shakespeare’s Hamlet.) But when it came time to create a theatre piece, they were directed to find a subject in the newspaper.

According to Brian Moore, the student who directed the piece, the story they selected was about a woman who was approached by the man who had raped her 20 years before. He asked her forgiveness, and she refused. Instead she initiated a prosecution, which caused controversy and criticism.

But in the process of writing the script, “It’s taken on a much different life of its own,” Moore said, a few days before opening night. “From that starting point, we’ve ended up in a much different place.”

Now the story takes place in Kuwait in the early 1990s, where the mayor of a city in Montana goes to honor the hero who saved lives during the oil field fires set by the retreating Iraqi forces in Gulf War I. The mayor is the woman who was raped 20 years before; the hero was her rapist, who has been in hiding ever since.

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