Theatre: The Black Knight

This week, Chicago theatre company Lifeboat Productions premieres The Black Knight, “a timely tale of love, trust, and resistance set in Nazi-occupied Prague.” In December 2021, Distant Era shot preproduction photos for The Black Knight at the City Lit theater, where the show will open at the end of this week on February 26, 2022 (with a preview the previous day).

Here’s the synopsis of the play from the ticketing page:

Kathi (Katherine Wetterman), Albrecht (Gary Henderson), and Fritz (Mac Westcott), have never known a life without surveillance. They have never been able to speak freely about their hopes or doubts. Coming of age in Nazi Germany, every choice, every word, held the possibility of discovery or death.
When their lives collide again in 1940s Prague, these three old friends must rely on any communication they have left. Locked into an impossible struggle, the decision to trust each other is one that cannot be taken back.
Directed on stage for the first time by Brian Pastor, The Black Knight, by Angeli Primlani explores the timely themes of trust, resistance, and love in a world under constant observation.
Synopsis of The Black Knight, by Angeli Primlani

Angeli Primlani, playwright.
(Photo by Steven Townshend, Distant Era.)

The Black Knight is a project many years in the making. In January 2019 (months before Distant Era’s inception), we did a headshot session for playwright Angeli Primlani, where she discussed this project she’d been working on. Fast forward three years through a global pandemic, and at last the show will see its stage debut.

Chloe Rabinowitz of Broadway World does a great writeup on The Black Knight, which goes into detail about the production, including quotes from the cast and crew.

I was particularly struck by the final paragraph of the Broadway World article. When I shot the preproduction images, Angeli and production manager Urusla Gruber talked about the idea behind Lifeboat, describing values of optimism and positivity in a dark world. In a time when audiences have grown accustomed to streaming services and more mindful of venturing outdoors, Lifeboat Productions offers an enticing reason go get out, a dose of the medicine to ease our collective pain:

Lifeboat Productions is devoted to the idea of Hopepunk Theater. In a world where meanness and toughness is valued, kindness and affection is the most punk thing one can embrace. The Black Knight’s message of resistance and love as the best weapons against facism has remained an extremely hopepunk theme. Many of the cast and production team members identify with historically marginalized groups and cultures, informing the ways the various characters both belong to and are excluded from the mainstream.
Broadway World

I was heartened to experience Lifeboat putting its values into practice last week when production manager Ursula Gruber discovered that I had not been paid for one of the images in use and brought this to my attention. Busy with other clients and projects, I would never have noticed; it meant the world to me that Lifeboat came forward, so in gratitude I offered that image as an extra gift for their premiere. Reading a company’s mission statement is one thing; experiencing it firsthand is another.

Lifeboat Productions

The Black Knight cast and crew

An Aside: New Stories in a Dark Era

In 2017, I watched every movie nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film from 2000 to present. Perhaps unsurprisingly, several of those films were set during this era. What I was surprised by was how many of them had new stories to tell, with new perspectives. Some that come to mind: Downfall (Germany), In Darkness (Poland), Sophie Scholl—The Final Days (Germany), Nowhere in Africa (Germany), Son of Saul (Hungary), The Counterfeiters (Austria), Katyń (Poland), and Želary (Czech Republic). This is to say nothing of the many that came before that time, including Schindler’s List, Life Is Beautiful, The Pianist, or Elem Klimov’s 1985 film Come and See, or the films that have come since—Jojo Rabbit in particular.

I’m excited to witness the new story that Angeli Primlani has written in this dark era, which Lifeboat has produced under the direction of Brian Pastor and featuring a great cast and crew, which includes another two-time Distant Era subject, Gary Henderson, featured in the poster above, who was “The Changeling” in our current The People of Light and Shadow series.

Here’s a gallery of preproduction images from The Black Knight, opening February 26, 2022.