October
31, 2003
Teschke
to Direct Conversations in Exile
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Photo:
Todd M. LeMieux
Director
Holger Teschke
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It would be nearly impossible to find someone
in North America better suited than Holger Teschke to direct the
work of Bertolt Brecht. MHC's visiting professor of theatre
arts is steeped in the legendary German playwright's work;
in fact, he was resident playwright and chief dramaturg at Brecht's
own Berliner Ensemble for most of the 1990s and has staged several
Brecht works over the years.
All of this makes Teschke the right choice for
directing an adaption of Brecht's Conversations in Exile
as part of the Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal
Arts's Artists, Intellectuals, and World War II: The Pontigny
Encounters at Mount Holyoke College, 1942-1944 symposium.
The performance, a staged reading that arose from one of Teschke's
classes this semester, will take place on Friday, November 7,
at 8 pm at McCulloch Auditorium in Pratt Hall; it is free and
open to the public.
Conversations in Exile is one of Brecht's
more obscure works, written between 1940 and 1942 while the playwright
was himself in exile—first in Finland, then in California—from
Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany. In the play, a group
of political refugees is trapped in Finland between the German
and the Soviet armies. As Teschke put it, "In a hopeless
situation, they nevertheless continue their discussions about
war and peace, cheese and patriotism, beer and philosophy, cockroaches
and freedom, and the crucial question: What is of more importance—a
human being or his passport?"
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Photo:
Todd M. LeMieux
Erin
Ronder '04 (right) adjusts Jennifer Shaw '06's
costume
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Given the theme and the time period of the work,
it seemed like a perfect choice for the Pontigny symposium, Teschke
said. "When I learned about the Pontigny conference and was
looking for plays for my staged reading class, I found an English
translation and was very surprised by how topical the piece is
today, for the global political situation as well as for the Pontigny
conference," Teschke said. "So I decided, although the
play is written for two men, to try a staged reading with a group
of students who are in my class. Not all of them are theatre arts
majors, but they're all very interested and engaged in theatre
and politics. It's a pleasure to work with them."
Brecht was an artistic contemporary of the Pontigny
attendees, and although he was unaware of the gathering here at
MHC, his circumstances were so similar that the Pontigny conference
would have interested him, Teschke said.
"He was finishing Conversations in Exile
in California during the same time as the Pontigny gatherings
took place at Mount Holyoke, and although he did not know about
these encounters, he also worked with his friend Lion Feuchtwanger
on a play about the resistance in France, The Visions of Simone
Machard. Feuchtwanger, a well known German Jewish novelist,
was in a camp in France in 1940 and knew about the situation of
refugees in Nazi-occupied countries first-hand," he said.
"Also, Brecht himself was in the center of the German exile
community in Hollywood, where famous German artists like Thomas
and Heinrich Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Alfred Doeblin, Vicki
Baum, and Salka Viertel found refuge."
The fact that Conversations in Exile is
so rarely performed, Teschke said, adds to the resonance of the
work's theme for the Pontigny symposium: "Beyond the
pressing importance of the play, it is also a great opportunity
to rediscover an almost unknown work by Brecht."
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