Several years ago, playwright Robert Schenkkan came across “Into That Darkness” by Gitta Sereny. While seeking to showcase a period of time when Nazi horrors ran rampant in the world, “Into That Darkness” did something remarkable: it narrowed the focus to telling the story of one ordinary man who for a brief moment, found himself possessing unlimited power.
This experience would go on to inspire Schenkkan’s newest stage work, “
Building the Wall,” which is produced by Actors' Theatre of Grand Rapids and is in its final week at Dog Story Theater. This contemporary work that appears to be ripped from the headlines echoes Edmund Burke’s famous quote on unchecked power: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Schenkkan, already an award-winning Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner for works like “The Kentucky Cycle,” “All the Way,” and “Hacksaw Ridge,” transports the audience to an imagined time about 20 minutes into the future in which the Trump administration has carried out their campaign promise to round up and detain millions of immigrants.
In this intimate, two-person dramatic work, a writer interviews the supervisor of a private prison as he awaits sentencing for carrying out federal policy that has escalated into unimaginable acts.
“Building the Wall,” like George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” reminds us that democracies are not always a constant in this world. This ripped-from-the-headlines play is alarming, riveting, as well as enlightening and joins a long list of other literary stories of authoritarianism.
Schenkkan, in this fresh, new work asks us to consider the warning signs of oppression and just like Sereny’s book, to apply a human face to our very inhuman acts. Don’t miss “Building the Wall” which ends on March 31.