Traveling Jewish Theatre presents John O'Keefes Times Like These

An conversation with John O’Keefe, Director and Playwright, Times Like These and TJT Co-founder and Associate Artistic Director Corey Fischer

CF: Times Like These is interesting because of the historical context and the contemporary aspects, but the thing that knocked me out about the play and what made me want to have it as part of TJT’s season was that it is about a relationship between two people, two artists. At that time, during the rise of Nazism, art was not separated from everything else. Everything was on the line because of the context, and therefore what transpires between the two characters is so amazing and transformative.

JO: It took some time to decide what I really wanted to write about. The decision was to look at a famous star (Meta Wolf) and what it meant to be the “Mr.” (Oskar Weiss, also an actor.) There can be a tremendous amount of jealousy in that type of scenario. That power struggle was amplified when suddenly, due to a governmental edict, the star becomes a non-human and the Mr. is catapulted to an unearned position. The power in the relationship shifts. Meta is far more talented, but due to Nazi affirmative action, so to speak, she is not as human anymore.

So I wrote some things about that element (power struggle and jealousy) but I thought no, that happens constantly and what I really wanted to say is that people can actually love each other. Studying the real life of the people on whom the characters are based, I realized it was actually that way. Meta Wolf was never famous though, Gottschalk was a movie idol who loved her so much that he resisted doing movies because he didn't want to attract attention to her.

CF: In the true story Meta was Jewish and he wasn't?

JO: Right. So they lived pretty poorly when they could have been rich. People eventually began to question why Gottschalk wasn’t doing any movies. So then, he went back to work because he felt that if he didn't, that would have drawn attention.

CF: Why didn't they get out of Germany?

JO: My idea is that people just didn't believe that things were that bad.

CF: The main speech, where Oscar is preparing for Hamlet - how did that evolve?

JO: I was listening to Michael Krasny on KQED one night and they were talking about the World Trade Center and the modern situation and I just wrote down some notes - I took those ideas and translated them into the 1930s context, it fit perfectly.

CF: It's astounding how one speech can be about Hamlet, about the Third Reich and about the current world situation and it's all encapsulated in about 10 lines.

CF: Some of the best actors are the ones who are not afraid to look bad. Both Meta and Oscar do that it the play.

JO: As an actor Oscar is afraid to do it, Meta can do it and Meta says, now you are forced to do it - because you are going to have to play a Nazi in hamlet.

CF: The paradox is that the willingness to do that is ultimately what saves their humanity. When you deny one part of yourself, you deny all.

JO: What they do when they make this covert Hamlet, it gives them their freedom, their silent immigration. There were many people that lived in Germany, especially actors that lived in fear, that didn’t get out for whatever reason. Many of them, as Oscar does in Hamlet, play it to the hilt and derive great joy by looking at these big fat Nazis enjoying something that it a sense was making a mockery of Nazism. In Berlin, there were many cabarets where it was happening right under Hitler’s nose. In fact, there were a lot of famous guys that were gay, that performed in the cabarets, and the Germans were laughing at the whole thing.

CF: How did they get away with it?

JO: They didn't, they eventually got caught. The Germans didn’t have a lot of control of what was going on in the country though and Hitler was a genius at turning one guy against another guy, and he would watch them fight, it's a Machiavellian dynamic. So I think a lot of Germans were having a hell of a good time during that period. The play addresses the idea this was a nation that was overpowered by an energy. It’s the mundaneness of evil. Times Like These is not a holocaust play in which you say . . . wasn’t that terrible “then” – it is a holocaust play but it makes you think, isn’t this terrible “now”. Remember it now. We have to mind ourselves, mind who we are moment by moment and admit that it is easy to jump on a scapegoat and ride it all the way though.