The Berlin Dig
The synopsis of the play seems interesting and significant. We are in present day Germany where three friends meet. One is a Turkish native who denies the Armenian holocaust. The two others are staunch German nationalists who condemn the Hitler era but disagree about current Turkish immigrants who “are clannish, refuse to learn the language and multiply in hordes.” This attitude is quickly appreciated by a visiting American fundamentalist arguing the deportation of Mexicans in the United States. The Germans expound on a popular current European perspective on American foreign policy: deploring the documented overthrow of democratically elected governments to back dictators that serve American interests; attacking such icons as Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy, Dick Cheney, and the Bushes; paralleling the Holocaust with “America’s shame is its slaves and its Indians.”
However, the art of drama is to be able to weave interesting ideas and historical truths into a human story that includes relationship, self-discovery, empathy, and sometimes even catharsis; it does not beat the audience over the head with incessant facts and figures, a diatribe of political polemics and propaganda. Author John Stuercke would have done well to have kept The Berlin Dig in workshop where a good director and competent actors might have helped him find a possible theatrical development.
Mr. Stuercke chose to direct this production. No director credits were listed in the program, and I saw no indication of such expertise on the stage. The actors, likewise, had scant credits and displayed the lack of the simplest theatre experience. No effort was made at a set except some symbolic shovels on the rear wall removed and replaced arbitrarily by an actor as he wanders on and off stage to quote another death toll in man’s unending list of atrocities and murders.
Politically, I agree with every statement and idea in the play. Artistically, I recognize that it is not a play—not yet—and not ready for a live audience.
El Centro Theatre through March 6, 2011
Tickets: 800-838-3006
www.brownpapertickets.com/event/141320