This is WESA Arts, a weekly newsletter by Bill O'Driscoll providing in-depth reporting about the Pittsburgh area art scene. Sign up here to get it every Wednesday afternoon . Quantum Theatre took a bit of a risk by opening a new stage adaptation of the classic 1920 horror film “The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari” just days before last week’s election. The original silent film, after all, is considered both a critique of authoritarianism and a premonition of the coming rise of Nazism. And playwright Jay Ball’s adaptation, with its heady, play-within-a-play structure and references to Bertolt Brecht, doesn’t exactly play to the cheap seats.
Nor does it reassure its audience everything’s gonna be alright. With electoral anxieties high, how many people would go see this thing, either before Nov. 5 or after? But in fact, says Quantum founder and artistic director Karla Boos, opening weekend at Downtown’s Union Trust Building was well-attended.
And though the first few shows after Election Day were “very rough” both for the cast and in terms of attendance, audiences have picked back up, she said. That’s a good sign not just for Quantum, but also, one hopes, for our ability to process what the country is going through right now. While playwright Jay Ball wrote the script in response to the fraught politics of these past several years, his “Caligari” isn’t any kind of close allegory.
Yes, the heavy is a carnival sideshow performer with an agenda, who’s found a wa.