Kyla Norton in “Fear and Misery in the Third Reich”
Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department alumni, students, and faculty members are in the cast and creative/production team of Bertolt Brecht’s 1938 play Fear and Misery in the Third Reich, presented by Haven Theatre Company February 8-March 11 at the Den Theatre, 1333 N. Milwaukee, in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood.
Josh Sobel
Claire Chrzan
Sasha Smith
Jeffrey Levin
Carol Cohen
The show’s cast includes Columbia College Theatre Department student Kyla Norton, a senior in the Theatre Department’s BA Program in Acting. The show is directed by Theatre Department faculty member Josh Sobel, who is also Haven Theatre’s artistic director. Sobel’s production team includes Columbia College Theatre Department alums Claire Chrzan ’11, a graduate of Columbia’s Theatre Design program (lighting design) and Madisen Dempsey ’17, a graduate of the Theatre Department’s BFA Program in Theatre Directing (assistant director) as well as Theatre Directing BFA program student Anna Sung-En Medill (assistant director). Also on the team are former Columbia College Theatre Department students Sasha Smith (movement design) and Abhi Shrestha (dramaturg). The show features original music by Columbia College Chicago Music Department alumnus Jeffrey Levin ’10, a graduate of the Music Department‘s BA Program in Music with a Composition Concentration. Haven Theatre’s co-founder and executive director, Carol Cohen, studied Theatre Design at the Columbia College Chicago Theatre Department.
Written during the buildup to World War II, the play depicts a Germany careening toward war, as an entire society begins to crack and the seeds of chaos and tragedy take root in the minds of its citizens. This ensemble-driven production views history with a contemporary eye. It’s a warning of how insidiously a culture can make space for atrocity, and a call to never allow it to happen again.
“As the world finds itself in the midst of its next great cultural shift, Brecht’s examination of the common citizen and how a society can be led to accept the inhumane feels strikingly immediate,” says Sobel. “Brecht wrote this play reflecting and pulling back the curtain on the news of the day as it was happening around him, providing an unnerving and – in our current moment – all too important call to confront injustice as it happens and to firmly and proudly say: No.”
For tickets, click here.
