2004-2005 Season: Hannah and Martin
Are there limits to freedom of speech? How do emotions bend morals? What are the perils of personal idolatry and misplaced romanticism? These are just some of the probing questions raised by Kate Fodor in this transfixing, critically acclaimed drama.
Taking advantage of recent historical research, Fodor applies her imagination to the facts of the long, secret relationship between two towering figures of 20th-century thought. Passion and principle clash as Jewish intellectual Hannah Arendt, who fled her native Germany as Hitler rose to power, struggles across a vast ideological divide to justify her enduring feelings for philosopher Martin Heidegger, her former mentor and sometime lover but also a Nazi-sympathizer.
Spanning the horrors of the Holocaust and its aftermath, Fodor’s 2003 debut play bristles with subtle insights, leaving us to ponder the agonizing complexities of life.