Spring Break
An act of defiance
Play brings awareness to campus about another side of Holocaust
Breann Schossow
Issue date: 10/9/08 Section: Scene
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This is the background for the first UW-Eau Claire theatre performance of the season, Bent, which opens at 7:30 p.m. today in Kjer Theatre.
The play opens with the central character, Max, and his lover Rudy recuperating after a drunken evening of promiscuity. However, the man Max brought home the evening before is not as random as the couple thought. Instead, his connections to the Nazis lead Max and Rudy to run for their lives and eventually to be sent to Dachau, a concentration camp where homosexuals, Jews and political criminals alike are sent.
Director Dick Nimke, associate professor of theater, said this play is about Max's journey and his ability to love himself and through that, to love another person. The opening scene, he added, sets the ball in motion in relation to Max's odyssey.
"He doesn't totally love himself. He can't love himself at the beginning of the play," Nimke said.
Preparations for the play have been going on since its selection last fall, Nimke said. Bent was chosen as one of this year's productions for several reasons. First of all, he said, students from a theatre Holocaust class showed an interest in seeing its performance and asked Nimke to take a look at it. Second, he added, its performance is also an asset to Eau Claire.
"The university looks to inclusiveness and diversity," Nimke said. "We thought this play was a good opportunity to look at those kinds of issues."
He added that this play and others chosen for the season are to give challenges to students.
Nimke said he would like students on this campus to see the play for two reasons.
First, he said, students should see the play because it demonstrates what human beings are capable of in the cruelest situations.
"It's the human soul's capacity to find love and rise above in inhumane circumstances, whatever it may be," he added.
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