Submitted by Anonymous on
Peter Nachtrieb is the playwright of our upcoming world premiere The Making of a Great Moment. The following appears in the playbill as the Director’s Notes.
Here’s what I love about Peter Nachtrieb.
He’s hilarious.
He’s sentimental about life.
He’s tall.
He’s subversive.
He is unsentimental about his own work.
He knows a groan is as good as a laugh.
He will rewrite a joke over and over again until he gets it just right.
He’s a good guy.
He’s thinks about honor, fairness and how we as an arts community can be better to each other.
He thinks about how he can better take care of his people.
He’s filthy.
No one writes funnier plays.
He’s even taller than you remember.
Every play of his tries to tackle a HUGE unanswerable question. Just as the Germans have words that try to encapsulate large unwieldy feelings (Weltschmerz – depression caused by the weight of the world, Torschlusspanik – the fear that as we get older time and opportunities are slipping away, and my favorite: Backpfeifengesicht – a face that cries out for a fist to hit it), Peter, our German playwright, does the same with his plays.
He writes plays that ask questions that are so large, the answer seems impossible to ever get at in 2 hours! (What is greatness? How we do something worthy of being remembered? Is all this suffering worth it for in service of making tens of people laugh? What will time remember of us as a species?)
And yet, because he’s so skilled at jokes, at the capturing the daily banter of life, at creating charming characters, you only later realize you’ve watched a large existential conversation.
How we do struggle with the choices we’ve made in the past (Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung), in the face of all we know today (Allgemeinbildung), and yet always move forward so we can show empathy towards our fellow human (Fingerspitzengefuhl)?
How do we answer that and have a good time in 90 minutes? (Nachtrieb).
I can’t wait to share this with all of you.
Sean Daniels, Artistic Director
Also, P.S. there was no room in this article for this, but the word for Grief Bacon is Kumerspeck and I just wanted to make sure I got that in here.
To learn more about The Making of a Great Moment, go to:
http://www.mrt.org/show/making-great-moment
To learn more about Peter Nachtrieb, go to:
http://www.peternachtrieb.com/
