Influence, produced by Gary Grossman for Katselas Theatre Company, continues Fri.-Sat., 8 pm; Sun., 7 pm; through April 4. Tickets $15-$25. Skylight Theatre, 1816 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles; 310.358.9936 or katselastheatre.org
Shem Bitterman
Award-winning playwright Shem Bitterman’s Influence, receiving its world premiere under Steve Zuckerman’s direction, deals with World Bank Director (Alan Rosenberg) plotting to set up a branch of his bank in Iraq, which would automatically give legitimacy to that country’s disorganized government and imply that everything there was under control. Yale-educated Branden (Ian Lockhart), who works for the Director, has an idealistic young girlfriend Sally (Kate Siegel) who is interested in providing mini-loans to underdeveloped countries. By getting involved with the Director’s schemes they are undone by their naiveté and their slowly awakening awareness of how people and projects are manipulated in the political world.
Even though its plot points are historically accurate, “theater is about what’s surprising,” says Bitterman. “I like to introduce a bit of chaos in my plays and I like that layer of ambiguity, giving the audience room to inhabit the play itself. The unresolved aspects are important and that has special power when it works.”
He speaks of the techniques of the great playwrights: “Pinter used silence as an additional character in his plays and Chekhov asked questions that don’t get answered. He used non-sequiturs to deflect the question.”
Bitterman has a tendency to talk in sound bites; to interview him is to benefit from his vast knowledge of the theater. “Plays are a plan of action and should be left open to interpretation,” he says. “We communicate as best we can and if the play is clear, riveting and effective it serves as a conduit between the playwright’s inner voice and the exterior voice of the audience. The audience is part of the experience.” He quotes a friend who told him, “I learn about people by how they react to your plays.”
“Audiences can teach us a lot,” Bitterman says. “The audience is innately intelligent and that factors into my thinking. When they are paying attention, they teach us how to engage them.” Young writers and directors often become defensive about their work, he says. “They get frozen when they should be listening to the actors and using them as collaborators. The actors don’t have to deliver the lines the way the playwright hears them in his head. Everyone should be free to explore. For example, Alan (Rosenberg) makes all his characters completely his own. And every day I do rewrites.”
Bitterman, who is from New York, went to the High School of Performing Arts and then attended Juilliard to study acting. He got his bachelor’s degree at Bennington in Vermont but along the way he became more interested in writing than in acting. He took his graduate degree in dramatic writing at the famed Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, an institution where many Pulitzer Prize-winning writers (including Tennessee Williams) got their training.
Although he still acts from time to time and plays small roles in his own films, Bitterman says, “Acting is too hard and I would hate to have to take all that rejection.” Instead, he has written more than 30 produced plays and screenplays including The Job, which won the LA Times Critics’ Circle Award for Best New Play of 1998 before it went to off-Broadway, and Harm’s Way, which won the 2008 PEN USA Literary Award.
Man.Gov is the first play in Bitterman’s trilogy about Iraq. It told the story of David Kelly, a British arms inspector who “outed” Prime Minister Tony Blair for “sexing up” his reports to the U.S. about Iraq. Those reports were instrumental in getting Britain and America into the war, and Kelly subsequently killed himself–”or was killed,” Bitterman says.
The second play is Harm’s Way which takes place two years into the war and deals with a Criminal Investigation Division (CID) officer’s pursuit of a soldier suspected of war crimes.
Zuckerman also directed both of those plays in their initial outings with Circus Theatricals.
Rosenberg and Lockhart
The third, Influence, taking place two years after in the summer of 2006, concerns the shenanigans at World Bank. “It is a parable about corruption,” Bitterman says. “Why did so many intelligent people back the war?” Brenden and Sally, the play’s protagonists, represent the “best and brightest” of their generation, he says, but they allowed themselves to be misled. “They learn a lot about themselves through the course of the play,” he adds, “and they change.” But the Director, recognizable as erstwhile World Bank Director Paul Wolfowitz, was “completely co-opted and used by America to create an intellectual rationale for the war. He is a person without a lot of self-awareness,” Bitterman explains. “He doesn’t change at all. He thinks the big picture is what matters and that the ends justify the means. He is what he is.
“I’m not trying to proselytize about Iraq,” Bitterman insists. “This play is more about the human element than the political. I don’t have all the answers but I believe people ought to stay on the path that leads to the greater good and live their lives as if every decision is a moral one.”
Feature image and production photos Ed Krieger. Headshot and article by Cynthia Citron.
