DEFYING POWER
Play tells story of Jewish woman who ‘hid’ from Nazis in plain sight
Katrina Muldoon spent seven years with a story in her mind.
As it evolved, she put pen to paper and developed “Phantom in the Third Reich.” The play will have its world premiere in Albuquerque and Santa Fe over the next month. The first show will be on Thursday, Nov. 8, at Hope Church in Albuquerque.
“I’ve been a writer and actor for a number of years,” Muldoon says. “I had a playwriting class, and my passion is the genre of epic. I fell in love with the stories of Odysseus, and I had a strong feeling that my passion would be to create new epics and new heroines that speak to contemporary Americans.”
The play is set in 1943 Nazi Germany.
It is centered on a strong-willed Jewish woman who defies the Nazis, but nearly at the cost of her own soul.
The script is inspired by a true story of a young Jewish woman, Marianne, who survived the last two years of World War II, living openly in Nazi Germany by “passing” as Aryan and befriending, charming, intimidating, or otherwise manipulating the Nazi officers she encountered.
Muldoon says the script is modeled after such historical films as “The English Patient” and “The Piano.”
The production is a hybrid between a screenplay reading and a stage play.
“An offstage narrator reads aloud the scene headings and stage directions while actors play out the drama,” she says. “It’s like seeing a live film.”
The script consists of 34 scenes, with a large ensemble of actors. The set is minimal, and the play features an original musical score.
“I wrote the first draft seven years ago, and the script is largely unchanged from the original draft,” she says. “What’s changed for me is becoming older and wise. I’ve learned a lot from reading pieces from Alice Munro. She’s taught me how active the human imagination can be. We create epic stories for ourselves in our mundane day-to-day actions. The script is about being a woman in a world of powerful men.”
The running time of the play is 2½ hours. It features an all-local cast and crew.