Starting Nov. 7, the doors to Wilder Main will open for one of Oberlin Student Theater Association’s finest productions yet. Through a hyperawareness of current political implications and an unwavering commitment to artistry, the cast and crew of Tony Kushner’s first full-length play, A Bright Room Called Day, have made this story feel not so far from our own lives at Oberlin College.
Directed by College second-year Alice Rosenberg, the ensemble of brilliant students brings a friend group of political activists in 1930s Germany to life as they laugh, cry, argue, and tease each other, and ultimately break apart. Beginning right at the fall of the Weimar Republic, the play slowly, painfully, walks us through Hitler’s rise to power as political unrest begins to shift the characters’ attitudes from bold and dreamy to lost and paranoid.
After months of table reads, intensive rehearsals, and of course, heavy political explanations in order to better understand the inner workings of a dismantled Weimar Republic, Rosenberg is ready to turn this show over to what she believes to be a fitting audience.
“Anyone going into it knowing nothing about it will see themselves on stage and realize how necessary it is to watch this play, and to leave the theater and do something beyond watching the play and take [further] action,” she said. “And that’s why it’s so beautiful, because it is speaking to everyone who’s seeing it and also the world that we’re seeing it in.”
One of the biggest questions this play asks, both of the audience and the characters themselves, is how to morally respond to a situation where action is necessary but terrifying, where one is “on the brink of a choice” as Rosenberg would say. This is precisely what makes the play so inspiring and relevant to much of the cast and crew, all of whom clearly hold stakes in what they hope to accomplish for audiences.
The play’s first act introduces us to the conflicting but passionate ways each character relates to communism and the complexities of their current political moment. Questions like “Are you still leftist if you sleep with Nazis?” as Stage Manager and College second-year Lucy Zener paraphrases, are constantly getting thrown back and forth between actors who have clearly mastered a comfortable hold over political jargon that the play intentionally loses itself in at times. But it’s only by the second act that we come to realize how important acting on these strong beliefs becomes, just as the time to decide on the choices Rosenberg refers to increasingly wanes.
The play, and certainly this production of it as spearheaded by Oberlin students, argues that contemporary political situations force everyday people — friends and lovers, artists and skeptics alike — to pick up the torch (or the hammer) in ways that these characters fail to. The audience leaves the play at the start of the 1930s, knowing what comes next. But the despair we may feel with this knowledge is the point. We see what went wrong in history; we understand the consequences of inaction.
This connection to a more contemporary political climate is also written into the play itself: Zillah Katz, played by College third-year Beatrice Tirona-Dusenbury, appears at numerous parts of the play as a young activist in the 1980s. She appears on her own for most scenes, once calling out to Agnes as a way to prove to the audience how the inaction of these ’30’s artists can be a model against proper conduct in pressing political situations. Her striking monologues unapologetically call out the connections between her world and theirs, and implore us to do the same.
These scenes are meant to be wake up calls — moments where the audience should pay extra attention to their own actions within our modern context.
“My hope is that some people on campus will be spurred to do something because they see that there’s this rise of fascism happening,” said Assistant Stage Manager and College second-year Coby Kramarsky. “And part of the problem that this play is addressing is that there [are] people who don’t do anything because they don’t know what to do. My goal is to have that be channeled into something productive.”
College first-year Yael Smith Posner plays Die Alte, a character she describes as “the past and the future and also kind of a ghost.” While Posner describes her character as constantly grappling with a frantic “fear of the world” every time she appears on stage, Posner herself sees past the fear her character embodies and instead agrees that it must be conquered.
“It can be a struggle to stay optimistic in our fascist world,” she said. “But we have our friends, and we have our dreams.”
In a world that this production argues is becoming too similar to the one depicted on stage, it is perhaps more important than ever to let the play inspire us — especially as members of Oberlin’s politically-driven community. With all four shows sold out and many still hoping to squeeze through the packed crowds to view these stellar performances, Bright Room will surely strike a resonant chord.
