What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/1250205
the form, compared to film, for example, was the immediacy of it — both in terms of how quickly you could move from script to performance, but also the immediacy of audience engagement and reaction. There's really nothing quite like it. I actually adapted that first play for film, and while that was satisfying for other reasons, it never had the same visceral impact as seeing it live, embodied by actors living it out in front of a crowd. Oddly, I didn't write another play until I moved to Arkansas a few years back. That one, "Among the Western Dinka," was part of the 2018 New Play Festival at TheatreSquared, and it was just as thrilling. In between, I've written for just about every studio in Hollywood, but nothing compares to that live, on-stage experience, the immediacy of it. Q. The plot of your play "The Interrogator" sounds fascinating. Can you tell us a little bit about how you became interested in that particular time in history and why you were motivated to create a play around it? A. The play concerns P.O. Box 1142, the code name for a secret Army-Navy interrogation camp set up during World War II to extract human intelligence from captured German soldiers and U-boat crew. The existence of the camp was only recently declassified, just around the time that many of the men stationed there were entering their late 90s and early 100s, if they were still alive at all. The National Park Service had begun interviewing as many as they could find, and I heard a radio story detailing some of their experiences. Three facts about the story hooked me immediately. First, that it was built in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., in Alexandria, Va. No one had a clue there were 100s of Nazi officers being held a stone's throw from suburban kitchen windows during the war. Second, that the interrogators were trained to extract information by building rapport and persuading the prisoners to cooperate, not by using any form of torture or physical duress. And third, the only men they could find — and they were all men — who were fluent in German and understood German culture intimately enough to befriend these Nazi prisoners were recent refugees from Europe. And that meant almost all of the interrogators were Jewish. They had joined up with the Army to go over and fight the Nazis, and now they had to befriend them on U.S. soil in hopes of getting useful intelligence. The implications for our current divisive political climate were immediately apparent, not to mention our nation's increasingly reactionary fear of foreign "others" and our troubling relationship with torture and human intelligence in the decades since World War II. If a group of young, Jewish refugees from Hitler's genocidal war could sit across from Nazi officers and find enough common ground to get useful intelligence without violence, then truly anything is possible. There are a thousand stories to tell about those five or so years the camp was in existence, but the play focuses specifically on one interrogator, a composite character based on the dozens interviewed by the park service, and his relationship with two Germans, one a composite character based on several Nazi prisoners and the other a U-boat commander, Werner Henke, who was an actual prisoner at the camp. Spoiler alert: Henke was the only casualty at the camp. He was shot trying to escape. The camp was razed after the war and almost all documentation destroyed. Everyone was sworn to secrecy. But fortunately, the National Archive has a handful of folios with carbon copy transcriptions of actual interrogations. The play is largely based on those translated transcripts, much of it verbatim. But I also weave in a little intrigue concerning the German rocket program. With scant documentation, I can't say for sure that info on the V-2 rocket was exposed at the camp. But I can't say it wasn't either! Ultimately, this is a story about our common humanity, that even in the most extreme circumstances, humans can find a way to show mercy, to extend grace to others and ourselves … and if not forgive entirely, then at least not perpetuate hate. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr.: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that." Q. Joanna Sheehan Bell, TheatreSquared's director of marketing and communications, said that the hope is that the play fest will be re-scheduled for a later date. Can you tell us a little bit about how this workshop/ performance opportunity aids in the development of your play? A. The New Play Fest at Theatre Squared is an incredible opportunity for writers. Toiling away on the script in isolation, hearing it in your head, only gets you so far. You need to know how an audience will respond and engage the material. But almost more important that the audience are the actors who will embody the characters. They are your most immediate gauge of authenticity, whether what you have written rings true. The New Play Fest offers this really unique opportunity to rehearse with actors for several days, put it up in front of an audience and see what's working (and what's not). Then you get another several days of rehearsal and another performance, to try things out, experiment, refine, explore. For two weeks you're writing and re-writing furiously, giving the actors new pages on a daily basis, even when you thought there was nothing left to say. It's really two weeks of intensive development, constant feedback, and audience engagement. And it's absolutely thrilling. 38 WHAT'S UP! MAY 24-30, 2020 Sharman Continued From Page 6 What's Up! is a publication of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. PRESIDENT Brent Powers EDITOR Becca Martin-Brown 479-872-5054 bmartin@nwadg.com Twitter: NWAbecca ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jocelyn Murphy 479-872-5176 jmurphy@nwadg.com Twitter: NWAJocelyn REPORTERS Deb Harvell 479-872-5029 dharvell@nwadg.com Lara Hightower 479-365-2913 lhightower@nwadg.com DESIGNER Deb Harvell ON THE COVER This display the Ozark Ball Museum in Fayetteville takes its cue from the game of billiards. Kelly and Donna Mulhollan hope the fledgling museum will take flight as a roadside attraction. (NWA Democrat-Gazette/David Gottschalk) FAYETTEVILLE T here are a thousand stories to tell about those five or so years the camp was in existence, but the play focuses specifically on one inter- rogator, a composite character based on the dozens interviewed by the park service, and his relationship with two Germans, one a compos- ite character based on several Nazi prisoners and the other a U-boat commander, Werner Henke, who was an actual prisoner at the camp. Spoiler alert: Henke was the only casualty at the camp. He was shot trying to escape. RUSSELL LEE SHARMAN on his play "The Interrogator"