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WHY ARE WE HERE?

WHY ARE WE HERE? explores how love can survive the traumas in the national security/surveillance state. It also examines the consequences, devastating and redemptive, of engaging in the Resistance.

SYNOPSIS                

Ben and Tony are a gay Jewish couple who’ve been together for 20 years. When they’re thrown into prison, they have no idea why, and they start arguing about who did what. Ben is a film reviewer obsessed with the 1959 movie “General della Rovere,” which tracks a con man’s unexpected transformation into hero in Nazi occupied Italy. Through a stunning twist of fate, this con man (Bardone) has to impersonate the great (partisan) General della Rovere inside a prison in Genoa. And at the last moment of his life, through a similar twist of fate, Ben is forced to make a decision like Bardone’s: whether to inform on Tony, and whether or not to live or die.

Stuart Spencer (author of The Playwrights ’Guidebook) said the following: “…the play is a bravura work of theatricality with multiple levels of reality, devious ambiguities, narratives-within-narratives, and a wildly mordant sense of comedy.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cast: 
There are basically four main actors (*SEE NOTES BELOW ON CHARACTER DOUBLING) BEN ABRAMOVICH, A moderately successful film critic with an anxiety disorder, around 40 TONY SAPERSTEIN, A high school history teacher and ex-radical; BEN’s partner for almost twenty years; early 60’s CLARISSA La RUE, A low level official in the prison, manipulative and wildly ambitious to get ahead; in her early 30’s GERHARD, A neo-Nazi (aggressive) guard in the prison with a slight stutter, in his late 20’s GERHARD 2, Also a guard in the prison: GERHARD’s twin and an intellectual who has empathetic leanings; in his late 20’s LOUDSPEAKER/ Dr. BEASLEY (CEO of the PRISON): We hear his voice but We never see him PRISONERS from surrounding cells shout things out periodically--We only hear their voices 9 (Non-speaking) PRISONERS walk across the STAGE briefly in 2 different scenes--once dressed in WW2 prison garb and once in contemporary prison garb S.S. LIEUTENANT, Obedient and punctilious, in his late 20’s (We only see him once at the end of the play) VITTORIO EMANUELE BARDONE, The protagonist in Rosselini’s 1959 movie, “General della Rovere”, in his mid to late forties SS COLONEL MULLER (There’s an umlaut over the “ u”), The antagonist in Rosselini’ 1959 movie, “General della Rovere,” in his mid to late 40’s DOUBLING: *The same Actor that plays BEN plays BARDONE; The same ACTOR that plays COLONEL MUELLER plays CLARISSA; the same Actor that plays GERHARD plays GERHARD 2 GERHARD sometimes speaks with a slight stutter; GERHARD 2 speaks without a stutter; GERHARD has tattoos, earrings, and a wife-beater tee shirt; GERHARD 2 has granny glasses, a button down shirt, a suede jacket, and fashionable slacks
Authors: 
Barbara Sperber
Script: