“If you had told me that Walt Disney met with a Nazi propagandist, I would not have believed you,” says director Matthew McCray. That historic confrontation between the beloved animation pioneer and Hitler’s favorite filmmaker is the centerpiece of Tom Jacobson’s new play, Crevasse. And now McCray is directing the drama’s world premiere at Burbank’s Victory Theatre Center. Though the initial run of the show ended earlier this month, due to critical acclaim and audience demand, the play is returning for additional performances, weekends Friday, Oct. 4-Sunday, Oct. 27. (For details see below).
Jacobson’s latest work chronicles the people and events that led to filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s November 1938 visit to America. She went to Hollywood to secure a distribution deal for Olympia, her epic two-part, four-and-a-half hour-long documentary record of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Only one mogul agreed to see her: Walt Disney.
“The comparisons between the work and ideals of filmmakers Disney and Riefenstahl provide a compelling examination of business and power through film,” says McCray.
Based On A True Story
Jacobson’s play is based on actual events when Riefenstahl hired Ernst Jaeger, a film critic and publicist, to the ire of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, to accompany her to America. Jaeger, a Social Democrat, had been expelled from the Reich Literature Chamber by Goebbels, partly because his wife Lotte was Jewish. Even with near-universal acclaim, the Third Reich-tainted Olympia never found a U.S distributor, and a dejected Riefenstahl sailed back to Germany.
A Complex Compelling Work
While the exact reasons for the meeting may never be known—Riefenstahl was ambitious, Disney may have wanted his films back in Germany after Hitler banned American films—it makes for compelling theater, McCray says.
“The play goes back to a period when the Reich is gaining power and Leni has been taking advantage of her relationship with Hitler to elevate herself as an artist,” says McCray. “Disney is building his studio and has to get creative before running out of money. They’re both at a place of borderline desperation and that creates a chemistry.
“How much compromise is compromise?” is the question the play asks, says McCray. “The play exists in that gray area, and most of us don’t think in those terms. They both have shared craft and business interests. The drama gets at the heart of what is challenging about doing the right thing and how economic pressure could drive you to do somethings you wouldn’t normally do.”
Audiences will find a humanized Disney and learn about a propagandist who helped build the Third Reich. “They both face a red line they can’t cross,” says McCray. “They came away from their intersection respecting each other; and Disney ultimately created anti-Nazi propaganda. So, we don’t know how this encounter may have changed them.”
Making it Relevant
“In November 1938 there was public outcry about Germany, but full details were not yet known,” says McCray. “This was just after Kristallnacht, years before the U.S. officially entered the war. There is a perplexing draw toward autocracy again. So it’s important to explore issues around power, and the conflicting influences of money and ethics.
“Riefenstahl had blind faith in Hitler, and we see autocrats rising around the world, so this is a significant play. Talking about autocrats and abuses of power never feels out of date.”
The Centerpiece
The tour, the nexus of the play, is an extended scene where the two debate propaganda, art and business, antisemitism, politics and share their backgrounds.
Ostensibly there to learn about filmmaking, Leni’s outing highlights many of Disney’s innovations and Jacobson uses Disney classics like Fantasia, Pinocchio and Bambi to illustrate storyboarding, live models, foley, scoring, the ink-and-paint department and even the multiplane camera.
She makes her case for him to help her, but leaves with only sketches.
Also A Love Story
That scene, described by McCray as the Oreo filling of the plot, is bookended by the story of Jaeger and his wife and the Holocaust. “It’s an emotional journey,” McCray says. “And it turns out Jaeger wasn’t the loyal colleague Riefenstahl thought he was.”
An Acting Challenge
Through the Victory Theatre Center’s co-founders Maria Gobetti and the late Tom Ormeny, McCray came to know Leo Marks and Ann Noble who take on the play’s multiple parts.
The drama’s technically a two-hander, but the cast takes on multiple real-life roles: Marks as Disney, Jaeger and Goebbels; and Noble as Riefenstahl, Lotte Jaeger and even an FBI agent.
“I haven’t worked with these actors before and this is thrilling,” says McCray. “What they do is a 90-minute marathon and they’re doing an amazing job.
“The structure is tightly woven and calls for real precision,” says McCray, with multiple dialects and costume and wig changes that range from 5 to 60 seconds. “And they have to help manipulate the sets.”
Impeccable research
To help create his scrupulously researched play, Jacobson turned to his copies of Jaeger’s letters and the expose Jaeger wrote for The Hollywood Tribune, How Leni Riefenstahl became Hitler’s Girlfriend.
“He has an original copy of that at least 80-year-old paper and it’s clear he’s spent a tremendous amount of time trying to be as authentic and grounded as possible,” says McCray.
McCray himself looked into the financial challenges facing both Riefenstahl and Disney. “I tried to understand the era when the play is set and studied the early studio days and the massive success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
“I don’t know if Tom is a big fan of Disney films, (McCray himself rewatched Fantasia) but he puts him in historical perspective and as a person with flaws,” adds McCray.
Technical Challenges
Jacobson’s play calls for constant lighting cues to set scenes, props “that appear out of nowhere” and an elaborate sound score including Kristalnacht, a ship and Disney’s foley studio.
The “crack” design team includes scenic designer Evan Bartoletti, lighting designer Azra King–Abadi, sound designer John Zalewski, projections designer Nicholas Santiago and costume designer Michael Mullen.
“We’re creating a world for magical things to happen and give our Disney a small amount of fairy dust. You can’t justify a show about Walt Disney without a little magic.”
Explaining his film The Concert Feature, which later became Fantasia, to Riefenstahl, Disney prompts symphonic samples of the classical score. “It’s important to realize what Disney did with music, and it would be a shame not to hear it.”
A Local Talent
McCray and Son of Semele (SOS), the theater company he founded in 2000 to produce his own Earthlings, have an association with Jacobson and his plays. In 2018, McCray, Son of Semele Ensemble artistic director, helmed Jacobson’s Plunge. It was the first in a trio of plays, following the course of a hushed-up crime over 32 years, that took place at L.A.’s historic Bimini Baths.
The popular ’20s-era bathhouse near downtown, “was close to our former Silverlake home,” says McCray. “He was a local playwright and we struck up a relationship. I had seen his plays at other theaters, and we stayed in touch.”
Jacobson invited McCray to an informal reading of the play he worked on during the pandemic, “to give feedback,” says McCray. “I was struck by it and became officially attached to it. Tom could tell I connected to it.”
A Unique Producing Arrangement
Son of Semele and Victory Theatre Center have teamed to present Crevasse.
McCray’s SOS occupied its 40-seat theater for 18 years, “and we were comfortable,” he says, with full seasons and festivals. Then the pandemic hit.
McCray was forced to decide if he wanted to rebuild the company’s infrastructure or go another route. “I came to like not having a facility or having to worry about logistics like a calendar and tickets.”
Since they’d lost the SOS space, McCray and Jacobson came up the with idea of producing the show at another theater. “Maria loved the play, and it became a dream situation,” says McCray.
Plus, the venue is block aways from where actual events in the play take place.
Further Exploration
Crevasse is part of a citywide festival “Reflections on Art and Democracy,” aiming to raise awareness about the current rise of fascism and antisemitism in the U.S. and around the world and the power of art and design to resist it.
Running concurrently with Crevasse is Jacobson’s The Bauhaus Project, a world-premiere theatrical event presented in two parts (Part 1: Bauhaus Weimer and Part 2: Bauhaus Dessau and Bauhaus Berlin) by L.A.’s Open Fist Theatre Company.
In the play within a play, a group of struggling Southern California art students trace the development and demise of the Bauhaus, a groundbreaking art school committed to “marrying beauty with utility.” The Nazis closed it in 1933.
“So there will be two Tom Jacobson plays running across town,” says McCray. The Bauhaus Project runs through Sunday, Aug. 18 at the Atwater Village Theatre. (For information, visit https://openfist.org.)
“We hope people will come and see both plays,” says McCray. “They share themes of power and art and control. They talk to each other.”
The Victory Theatre Center is at 3326 W. Victory Blvd., Burbank. Performances will be at 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday and 4 p.m. Sunday. Tickets range from $32-$40, For more information, call 818-841-5421 or visit www.thevictorytheatrecenter.org.
Steve Simmons is an accomplished writer and editor who writes about a wide array of topics including entertainment. His successful experience at The Beverly Hills Courier and other publications set the stage for his blog. Contact Steve at steve.simmons0211@gmail.com or 626-788-6734.
