written by Jordan Harrison
directed by Amy Rummenie
October 17 – November 1, 2008
Pillsbury House Theater
The Frau used to direct beautiful films for a fascist government. Now she’s trying to make a film that’s simply beautiful. But when telegrams start to arrive from the Minister of Propaganda, The Frau can no longer ignore the real war outside her sound stage. A darkly comical look at the role of artists during wartime, inspired by the life and work of Leni Riefenstahl.
Cast
Production Team
| the frau | Zoe Benston | director | Amy Rummenie |
| the extra | Christine Weber | set | Andrea Heilmann |
| the man | Erik Hoover | costumes | Renata Shaffer-Gottshalk |
| the boy | Grant Sorenson | lighting | Jenny DeGolier |
| sound/music | Michael Croswell | ||
| props | Jenna Papke | ||
| stage manager | Sarah Holmberg | ||
| wigs | Robert A. Dunn | ||
| assistant director | Ben Egerman | ||
| technical director | David Pisa | ||
| publicity image | Dan Norman | ||
| production images | David Pisa |
Reviews
Jordan Harrison’s acclaimed play Amazons and Their Men is not actually about Leni Riefenstahl, who made beautiful propaganda films for the glory of Third Reich, but the parallels are clear. Hitler’s propagandist had to abandon a film project about Amazon Queen Penthesilea when Germany invaded Poland.
The character dubbed “The Frau,” played by Walking Shadow’s Zoe Benston, steers the action on a sound set in Germany in 1939, while a bloody war is happening just outside. Paradoxically, on the movie set, they’re fantasizing a romanticized version of the Trojan War. As events unfold, the fictional beautiful war is intruded on by the actual one.
Harrison says that Amazons’s gay characters are “very secretive. In the world of the play, their sexuality puts them in quite a bit of danger. But they’re filming this occasionally homoerotic sword-and-sandal movie, which seems to embolden the two male leads to act on their desires. There is an almost camp sensibility to the play’s ‘on camera’ scenes: outsized acting, daring duels, poisoned grapes, blonde equestrian vixens. The play is less about homophobia, and more about the responsibility of artists during wartime. In writing the play, I wanted to ask whether it’s the responsibility of artists to make work that reflects the world they live in. Can engagement sometimes be as dangerous as disengagement?”
-John Townsend, Lavender Magazine
…I highly recommend this production. Actually, I love that Walking Shadow is three for three with me right now. They’ve produced three plays in a row—The American Pilot, [William] Shakespeare’s Land of the Dead, and Amazons and Their Men—which, on some level and as much as I admire them, bug the hell out of me. When Walking Shadow puts on a play, I am never a passive audience member. And that’s all too rare, even in a town up to its neck in quality theater offerings, large and small. Quibbles aside, Amazons and Their Men is smart, funny, engaging theater. Go see it. Maybe you’ll get lucky and it’ll bug you, too.
-Matthew Everett, MNArtists.org
