In Conversation with Sally Stubbs
PLANK Magazine sat down virtually with Vancouver Playwright Sally Stubbs to talk about her new piece Herr Beckmann’s People which opens this Friday at the PTC Studio on Granville Island.
An award-winning playwright, teacher-director, and performer who loves to clown, Stubbs has just completed a graduate degree in writing at the University of Victoria. Her scripts include Wreckage (Scirocco Drama), Faroland, Centurions, Eyes. Two, She’ll to the Wars, Home Movies and Spinning You Home, which she has begun to adapt as a novel for young adults. Herr Beckmann’s People has also been selected for a showcase at the 8th International Women’s Playwriting Conference in Mumbai, India, and is the winner of the third annual Canadian Peace Play Competition.
Herr Beckmann’s People runs until June 19, with a preview performance on June 10. The production emerged out of Flying Start, an initiative between Playwrights Theatre Centre and Touchstone Theatre
Andrew: Why don't we start with a little background on the piece. What was your initial inspiration in creating Herr Beckmann’s People?
Sally: I’ve visited Munich twice, once when I was seventeen and then again when I was twenty-one. Both times I was with my best buddy. Her relatives – an eccentric and larger-than-life German couple in their sixties – were the inspiration for Herr Beckmann’s People. They found us a ‘decent’ room, shuttled us around the city, fed us, warned us off the Hofbraühaus (futile attempts!), and shared stories with us about their amazing experiences before, during, and after World War II. He had been a translator for the SS and she was once a concert pianist who played in Berlin for high-ranking Nazis.
This couple, their generosity and kindness, and especially their stories , shattered my naïve perceptions about World War II and humanity. I wondered how people - bright people, kind people – could make such bad choices, do horrific things? Herr Beckmann’s People is my attempt to explore this question by following a family and specific choices they made in the midst of the madness of World War II Germany.
Andrew: What amazing material to work with! Before we go any further, I have to ask you what the Hofbraühaus was/is?
Sally: The Hofbraühaus is a brewery and a huuuuge beer hall. It’s also a magnet for locals and tourists. It was built in 1607 and the general public’s been hanging out there since 1828. Wheat beer is served in steins by women wearing traditional costumes with the puffy blouses and big cleavage. Meanwhile, people swill, chow down on warm pretzels, wurst, and sauerkraut, and listen to and sing along with Bavarian music. You’ve got to love the Hofbraühaus drinking song. The lyrics: ‘There’s a Hofbraühaus in Munich – one, two, drink!’
I didn’t realize it when I was there, but the Hofbraühaus had also been a hangout for members of the Nazi party. On February 24, 1920 Hitler proclaimed the twenty-five point program of ideas which were to become the basis of the Party. The beer hall was also one of the first places where violent acts were perpetrated by the Nazis against Jews. Apparently, until 2006 the Hofbraühaus still displayed a baby picture of Adolf Hitler.
Andrew: That’s incredible. I can’t believe they displayed the Hitler baby photo until so recently. What fascinates me about what you’ve talked about so far is the casual connection between average people’s lives and what we think of as great evil. You’re in a beer hall where Nazis hung out and drank – you were so close in time you could almost feel their vibrations.
You decided to use the lens of a single family to explore the issue of individual connection to horrific events. How much is based on real stories and where does your imagination come in? What is the time and location of the story, will we find ourselves involved in events during the War?
Sally: It’s true that the real Rainer was Mennonite and was raised in Russia. It’s also true that his family fled during the Revolution due to atrocities committed against them. It’s true that he became a translator for the SS and married ‘Clara’, a brilliant pianist who played concerts in Berlin for high-ranking Nazis. Many of the stories about their experiences before, during and after the War feed the narrative and some of the character details are based on those of the real people, e.g., ‘Rainer’s’ experiences in Russia and his fascination with stamps and the postal system. It’s also true that after the War and going ‘underground’ to start a new life, ‘Clara’ played only ‘house concerts’. One of my most exquisite memories is of being the only audience member for one of her apartment concerts. For me she played Debussy’s Clare de Lune.
It was this image – a large woman in her 60s playing exquisite piano for a younger woman – that sparked the play. I began to wonder about this young woman. Who was she? What she was doing there? What was she thinking while listening to this amazing music played by a woman once affiliated with the Nazis? Anna was born. A visual artist and the daughter of Clara and Rainer, she is a ‘disciple’ of Max Beckmann, the great German Expressionist painter whose astonishing and disturbing works were declared ‘depraved’ and ‘decadent’ by the Nazis. Anna is 39, grieving, and mad as hell when she returns from Canada to Germany in 1969 for the first time in 21 years.
The specifics of the narrative were the hard part: getting them to resonate and live in the historical reality of World War II and its aftermath. Virtually everyone knows something about this time, and most of us have strong opinions, even personal connections to the horrors of World War II. What interested me most was coming at it from a different angle. What propelled these people to make the choices they made? I wanted to create a family drama which sprung from one action, something seemingly small in the great scheme of horrors, and examine the intimate family connection to it. Most importantly, I wanted to explore the full humanity of these people.
The central action of the play takes place in 1969 in Clara’s tiny Munich apartment where Anna paints her Mother’s portrait and Clara plays a ‘house concert’. Their conflict and the narrative also travel the audience to Berlin before, during, and just after the War.
Andrew: I’m working on a historical piece too (albeit one set much further back in the mists of time) and perhaps the most overwhelming part of the research is all the conflicting “evidence” I have to wade through. You’re working in an era that I would imagine is even trickier because it is so known and, as you say, everyone has an opinion/direct emotional response to events that took place in Germany during the war. Did you do a lot of research and if so how did it inform your work?
Sally: I thought I’d done a lot of research before I moved into development with Playwrights Theatre Centre and Touchstone. Wrong! Martin Kinch (of PTC) and Katrina Dunn (of Touchstone) were adamant that the play sat a little uneasily in time. They cracked the whip and set me homework: a timeline. I went back to the books and spent great whacks of time reading, making notes, figuring out what was going on when and how my characters could have done what they needed to do in the time frame of the play. I then laboriously loaded the details – historical and character data - into a fifteen page timeline that spanned pre- World War I to 1970 and which moved from Russia to Germany to Canada. Thank God they insisted I do this work. I’m not a structured thinker. I tend to process in images and leaps and swoops. Despite this, I seem to want to write complicated narratives that move between realities and time periods. Crazy! Doing this research, and especially laying it out in the timeline, made everything a lot less painful as we moved forward into development and, finally, rehearsals. I felt pretty darn chuffed when a couple of the actors told me how helpful the timeline was to their work. Hmmm, maybe I’ve learned a lesson.
Andrew: Yes! I can totally relate. My instinct is to write organically and then to spend most of the rest of the “writing” period going over and giving the piece some semblance of a structure. It’s amazing how helpful having something like a timeline can be. Not only does it impose a sense of temporal structure and logic, it can also set limitations on your imagination (which is sometimes very helpful). Can you tell us a little bit about the development process for this piece? The play was developed through PTC’s Flying Start program.
Sally: I began writing Herr Beckmann’s People in 2005 (yikes!) at the Siminovitch Master Class. The first draft was completed at the Playwrights Theatre Centre’s 2007 Playwrights Colony. From there it went to Nightwood Theatre’s Groundswell Festival in Toronto before being selected for the Flying Start Program by Martin and Katrina.
Flying Start is a collaborative initiative of PTC and Touchstone. The goal of the program is to develop and professionally produce promising new plays by playwrights working to establish themselves. It’s no secret that for new writers, and especially those working outside the theatre community, it’s tough to get scripts read let alone produced professionally.
A little under two years ago I received an email telling me I was one of two PTC playwrights being considered for Flying Start. It was a complete surprise. I trotted along to an interview with Martin and Katrina where we talked about the play, my goals, and the Flying Start Program. Obviously, I was thrilled to be invited to participate in Flying Start and especially when I heard that Martin and Katrina were also interested in assuming the pivotal roles of production dramaturg and director. An opportunity to work with two of Vancouver’s most respected theatre professionals and organizations on the production of my script was a great gift.
My Flying Start experience has been stellar; my script received over a year of development including one-on-one dramaturgical sessions with Martin and some involving both Martin and Katrina; a number of planning sessions with both; several workshops involving some of Vancouver’s finest actors; and a spot in the PTC’s 2009 New Play Festival. I’ve been consulted on and/or actively involved in every step of the production process including casting, design meetings, and rehearsals. Meanwhile, Touchstone and PTC are working to help the script find ‘legs’ by extending invitations and promoting Herr Beckmann’s People to artistic directors, dramaturgs, and literary managers across the country. I can’t thank PTC and Touchstone enough for this amazing experience. Flying Start is an outstanding program for playwrights. May it live long and be fruitful! I urge playwrights to investigate. In fact, after the matinee of Herr Beckmann’s People on Sunday, the 13th Martin, Katrina, and I will be there to talk about Flying Start: how it works, new developments, my experiences, and applying to the program.
For more information on the production you can go here. You can find out more about the show or the Flying Start information session by contacting Touchstone.