Press Releases
Press Releases
Drums In The Night
The Department of Theater and Dance at Bowdoin College will open its season with Bertolt Brecht’s provocative expressionist comedy Drums in the Night. Set in Berlin, 1919, in the aftermath of WWI, Drums examines the combustive intersection of political ideology and personal trauma that accompanies war. The story revolves around Andreas “Andy” Kragler, a soldier presumed dead after four years as a prisoner of war in Africa, and his fiancée, Anna, who has just agree to marry Freddy Murk, an Industrialist war-profiteer.
As Anna struggles with the decision between the comforts of a bourgeois home and a difficult life with the man she loves, a battle breaks out. The Spartacists, a communist faction, are assembling in the Newspaper District in an attempt to ignite revolution and overthrow the government. Kragler must now decide what to fight for: Anna or the Revolution. Drums in the Night forces us to examine our own choices and convictions and ask ourselves what we would sacrifice for our political beliefs.
A German playwright best known for his works The Threepenny Opera and Mother Courage and Her Children, Bertolt Brecht wrote Drums in the Night in 1922 at the age of twenty-four. It was his first major success. Director Roger Bechtel, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Theater and Dance, translated and adapted the work from the original German text. Bowdoin’s production will be will be the first performance of Bechtel’s version.
Talkbacks with the director and actors will be held after each performance.
Drums in the Night will be presented on Thursday, Friday and Saturday October 29 – 31, 2009 at 8:00 p.m. in Pickard Theater. Performances are free and open to the public. Tickets are available at the Smith Union Information desk, at 207-725-3375 and at the door.
Drums in the Night is produced with assistance from the Alice Cooper Morse Fund for the Performing Arts and the Friends of Bowdoin Fund.