Hello Beautiful People,
On Sunday, I had the honor and privilege of seeing BENT at Pace University.
Honestly, this wasn’t a work event. I didn’t even have any intention of writing about the show – I just wanted to go to a piece of theater, and, for once, not write about it afterwards. I just wanted to be there for my dear friend, Jesse James Keitel, and enjoy a night of theater.
Well, clearly that didn’t happen. The not writing anything, I mean. (Because, make no mistake, I throughly enjoyed this production of BENT.)
Truthfully, I wasn’t compelled to write this piece until I had dinner with my mother last night. It was just the two of us, and we were talking about the show. She had never heard of the show, had no idea what it was about, and so I told her.
I told her that Bent is a 1979 play by Martin Sherman. That it revolves around the persecution of gays in Nazi Germany, and takes place during and after the Night of the Long Knives. I told her that at the heart of the story is young man named Max, (Dominick Pate), who, at the start of the play is living with his lover, Rudy, (Jesse James Keitel). I told her how it was so clever and funny – that it, until the Nazi’s came to their home. And well, after that, humor becomes a bit of a foreign concept. I told her how Rudy is killed in a way that breaks your heart and your spirit simultaneously. I told her of Max’s struggle, his guilt, his demons – and then I described to my mother the monologue that Max delivers when Horst presses him about wearing a gold star instead of pink triangle – that the Nazi soldiers made him have sex with a thirteen year old girls corpse to prove that he wasn’t a homosexual. I told my mother how I was impressed and blown away by that moment between both Dominick Pate (Max) and Riley Suter (Horst) – that it hurt my heart to watch that and to hear that, and I truly mean that as the utmost compliment to both actors, for when you’re audience is right there, feeling your pain, your hurt, and the visceral emotions that you have put on display, well, it doesn’t get much better than that.
Anyway, when I finished recounting Max’s monologue, I looked at my mom, and she was crying. Quiet tears were just streaming down her face.
And I said to my mother, “What’s wrong?”
And true to her form of goodness and grace, she just replied, “I don’t understand how people could ever want to hurt one another like that. I just will never understand it. But thanks, Meg, I’ll be thinking of this show all night.”
…
…yes, thank you.
Thank you indeed.
See, it may have been a college production, but these students delivered a performance with an intense ferocity that I have yet to see on a college stage. Every fiber of their beings was committed to telling this story. This awful, tragic, yet somehow inspiring story.
This production was directed by Dr. Ruis Woertendyke, a man who I am honored to have met. For me, there is a line from his Director’s Note that speaks volumes –
Perhaps with the help of plays like BENT we will mature as a species and come to understand, as my 18-year-old son has declared, that homosexuality is part of human evolution. At the very least, we have to learn how to accept people who are not copies of ourselves.
At the very least, we have to learn how to accept people who are not copies of ourselves. Imagine, for a moment, what this world would be like if learned to learn from our differences. Imagine the possibilities. The growth. The change. The good. Imagine the good that would come to this world should we all be capable of shutting our mouths before we spewed hate, if we decided to listen before we spoke.
Imagine?
There are things in life that you may never understand. There are things in life that you may never agree with. There are things in life that you may never like. But, confusion, disagreement, and dislike? Well, they’re never, ever an exuse for violence. For abuse. For hatred. For bullying.
This performance of BENT, as my dear friend Alex Brightman would say, was a back row performance. It didn’t matter where you were sitting in the house – every word, every syllable, every emotion that was generated from the cast hit you like a ton of bricks. Emotions and feelings and tears were absolutely palpable that evening.
And it was awesome.
Congrats to the cast, crew, and creative team of BENT – I cannot wait to see what you all do next.
Live, Love, Learn,