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THE THEATRE GROUP
presents the West Coast Premiere of
The Deputy
By ROLF HOCHHUTH
Adapted by JEROME ROTHENBERG
Directed by Gordon Davidson
UCLA August 13 thru September 26, 1965
Rolf Hochhuth has dedicated The Deputy
"To the memory of
Father Maximilian Kolbe
Inmate No. 16670 in Auschwitz
Provost Bernard Lichtenberg of Hedwig's Cathedral, Berlin"
Provost Lichtenberg prayed openly for the Jews and was arrested by the Gestapo. He asked to accompany deportees to camp, and died on his way to Dachau. When ten Polish prisoners at Auschwitz were to be beaten and starved to death in reprisal for an escape attempt, Father Kolbe took the place of one of them, the father of a family.
The Cast
(in order of speaking)
The Apostolic Nuncio in Berlin - Joseph Ruskin
Father Riccardo Fontana, SJ - Robert Brown
A Father in the Papal Legation - Philip Cary Jones
Kurt Gerstein, Obersturmfuhrer SS - Richard Carlyle
Jacobson - Walter Koenig
The Doctor _ Mark Richman
Vittorio - Joseph Ruskin
Photographer - William Wintersole
Count Fontana, counsel to the Holy See - Alan Napier
The Cardinal - Ronald Long
Officer of the Swiss Guard - Andre Carpenter
Father General - Ian Wolfe
Brother Irenaeus - Walter Koenig
Sargeant Witzel - Walter Koenig
First Italian Militiaman - Lucian Baker
Second Italian Militiaman - Richard S. Ramos
Captain Salzer, Gestapo chief, Rome - William Wintersole
A girl - Anna Brown
Industrialist - Joseph Ruskin
Luccani, another prisoner - Philip Cary Jones
Pop Pius XII - Philip Bourneuf
Scribe - Philip Cary Jones
Little Girl - Teri Lee Robertson
Woman - Lois Newman
Guards and Prisoners - Don Spencer and Neil Elliot
ACT I
The Mission
Scene I
The Papal Legation in Berlin. December, 1942
Scene II
Gerstein's apartment, the following morning
THE BELLS OF ST. PETER'S
Scene III
Fontana's Palace in Rome. February 2, 1943
THE VISITATION
Scene IV
Office of a Religious Order in Rome. October 16, 1943ACT II
THE VISITATION
Scene V
Gestapo Headquarters in Rome. Dawn, October 17, 1943
IL GRAN RIFIUTO
Scene VI
A throne room in The Vatican, the same day.
AUSCHWITZ, OR WHERE ARE YOU, GOD?
Scene VII
The Deputy was first performed in Berlin in 1963 at the Freie Volksbuhne under the direction of Erwin Piscator. Under various titles - The Representative, The Vicar - it has since been performed in twenty countries and in as many languages. Because of its massive length - it would require 6-8 hours to perform - the playwright has never seen the full text performed nor in all those many productions has he ever seen the same version, cutting or interpretation. Each translator, adapter, producer, and director is forced to present only a selective view of Hochhuth's vision. The adaptation made available to the Theatre Troup is the same text as performed in New York and is the only acting version released in the United States. It is, of course, a compression of the original text and focuses on the nightmare journey of the young Jesuit Father Riccardo Fontana, to the exclusion of much historical and philosophical material.
Rolf Hochhuth has written: "The most momentous events and discoveries of our time all have one element in common: they place too great a strain upon the human imagination. Man can no longer grasp his own accomplishments. For despite the tremendous force of suggestion emanating from sound and sense, metaphors still screen the infernal cynicism of what really took place - a reality so enormous that even today, twenty years after the events, the impression of unreality it produces conspired with our natural strong tendency to treat the matter as a legend, as an incredible apocalyptic fable."
The Deputy is a morality play set against the historical fresco of events which begat and tolerated the most horrendous crime of modern times. Although the playwright makes a specific judgment, it is this production's hope that each member of the audience will perceive a larger intent - one of personal responsibility. The play is full of symbols - religious, philosophical, social - and we have deliberately chosen to underline the use of symbols in the settings and costumes themselves. History is emphasized in the documented facts, figures, and files in all the offices in all the record buildings in all countries. The universality of all of us who uniformly dress the way we do because we are servants of an ever-growing impersonal bureaucracy is emphasized through the concept of a basic costume for the entire cast. Certain groupings of characters are specifically chosen to be played by the same actor in keeping with Hochhuth's original intent that "recent history has taught us that in the age of universal military conscription it is not necessarily to anyone's credit or blame, or even a question of character, which uniform one wears or whether one stands on the side of the victims or the executioners."
Though history sometimes looks like cheap melodrama, its reality is something more complex. This reality in the theatre - unlike the actualities of the documentary to which our eyes and ears and perhaps our minds have become numbed - comes from making visible the consequences, the limits of an action, rather than its causes.
-- Gordon Davidson
