“When I tell people I’m German, they automatically think, `He’s responsible,'” LaBar said during a rehearsal break for “The Investigation,” Peter Weiss’ play about the Auschwitz war crimes trials of the 1960s.
“But this is not a vindication of me,” the director said of the production that has occupied his energies for the past six months.
“The Holocaust was a multinational disaster, which the Jews unfortunately bore the brunt of,” he said. “Of all the communities involved — the Gypsies, the gays, partisans, members of resistance movements, anyone who spoke out against the Third Reich — only the Jewish community has kept this issue really alive.”
The Bay Area Jewish community has been an integral part of this staging of “The Investigation.” Produced by The Theatre Factory, where LaBar is artistic director, the play is co-sponsored by The Holocaust Center of Northern California, which provided considerable resources and expertise.
The play opens Friday, Nov. 1 at San Francisco’s Somar Gallery. The Saturday, Nov. 2 performance — featuring a reception and a question-and-answer session with two Auschwitz survivors, the cast and a court translator at the trial — will benefit the Holocaust Center,
When “The Investigation” opened in 1966 at 13 locations, including London, Berlin, Los Angeles and New York, it was considered one of the most important theatrical productions of the year, according to LaBar. Weiss, a Jew whose parents had left Germany in the ’20s, already was an established playwright, with the sensational “Marat/Sade” to his credit.
The late playwright’s graphic descriptions of the suffering of concentration camp victims drew worldwide attention. LaBar, supported by a recently published biography of Weiss, feels the writer may have shared some of the characteristics of the Marquis de Sade, subject of his earlier work.
“The play he wrote was for people who enjoyed hearing about the pain of others,” he said.
LaBar has reworked the script, cutting out half the graphic descriptions and moving the action back and forth between the courtroom and the camp.
“To me, the play is much more important than all the dialogue,” he said, justifying the rewrite. “I think it is more important for us to understand how this happened more in the psychological realm than the physical realm of the actual atrocities.”
Weiss worked directly from the transcripts of the trials, condensed the actual number of witnesses from 300 to nine for his drama, with 18 accused, instead of 21.
LaBar also read the transcripts, plus a great deal of survivor literature before pruning the original drama and adding some of his own dialogue. The cast numbers 31, four of them members of Actors Equity. All performers have volunteered their services, motivated by the nature of the project.
Discussing the transcripts, LaBar said 90 percent of the accused said they did nothing, and 9 percent admitted only slight complicity with the Nazi’s extermination plan. Only one, Pery Broad, admitted guilt. A section of “The Broad Report,” a written document that he read aloud at the trial, is incorporated into the show.
“The play itself takes no moral position,” LaBar said, “but the events speak for themselves.”