Janet Schlapkohl & My Sister
INTERVIEW: Janet Schlapkohl, Playwright
Last year Janet Schlapkohl’s play My Sister, starring identical twins Emily and Elizabeth Hinkler, directed by Paul David Story, made its West Coast premiere at the Hollywood Fringe Festival where it won two awards. Schlapkohl wrote the play with then-theater department students Emily (Magda) and Elizabeth (Matilde) in mind at the University of Iowa. My Sister premiered at the University of Iowa in September 2013, transferring to the Riverside Theatre Company in Iowa City a month later. In January 2014, the production traveled to the Quad Cities Theatre Workshop, where it was so well received that it had an extended weekend of performances before landing in L.A. in 2015. An expanded version of this play will be produced at the Odyssey Theater beginning January 16, 2016.
What is My Sister about?
The interplay of relationships against the backdrop of the National Socialist political
Magda (Emily Hinkler). September 24th, 2013. Photo Credit: The Daily Iowan/Wanyi Tao.
movement—it’s also about how and why we perceive people as other or different. Specifically in this play it’s about disability and how we see people with a disability as other or different, even when it’s an identical twin.
We see a character that we make an initial judgment of and then we get to know her and our view changes—and that’s life isn’t it? That applies to anyone that we think is not like ourselves, or someone who is unfamiliar, either with a disability or any other challenge—or they’re not our religion or our ethnicity. It’s that fear of something that’s unknown and once you know it, it changes and that’s what you discover in this play.
I also wanted to cover a history that is little known. At this time in Germany (during the Nazi rise to power), Nazis first began rounding up people with disabilities, as they eventually did with Jews, homosexuals and Gypsies, to be exterminated. My Sister, is about the impact of this practice on identical twin sisters, one of whom has a disability.
What inspired you to write My Sister in 2012 for your students?
I run a theatre company [Combined Efforts Theatre] whose mission is purposeful inclusion of people with disabilities. Our productions are not disability awareness plays, they are just plays. Our goal is to include people who might not have an opportunity to perform. The reason is never lack of talent, it is lack of opportunity.
I was also doing research on a project; covering the period between the two World Wars and this play came out of that. I knew the Hinklers from the University of Iowa where I was doing my MFA in playwriting. They were in the undergraduate acting program. I really liked them and saw that were very talented so I told them I was writing play for them, which I think startled them! I gave it to them and they decided to do it as a senior project.
Janet Schlapkohl. September 24th, 2013. Photo Credit: The Daily Iowan/Wanyi Tao.
Tell me how your family histories have also served as inspiration and material for My Sister?
My mom is an identical twin and my grandmother was a German immigrant. There are stories I heard while I growing up. My family is not Jewish, they’re from Northern Germany, which did not have the larger Jewish population as let’s say Berlin for example. And they left before the war, but they still had family back in Germany and they still exchanged letters. I had relatives who were Germans and Nazis because they were in Germany. At that time if you were living in Germany you were by default a Nazi, you were protesting loudly, quietly, or you weren’t protesting, you were just going along with it.
Why do you think people connected with My Sister so much?
It’s ultimately a story about relationships, they story is about sisters, and anyone with a sibling can relate to that kind of closeness, the feeling of protection and closeness. My Sister is also about the desire to become artists, a relatable message especially in L.A. It’s about wanting to start careers, wanting something to happen, wanting to be discovered, wanting fame or just wanting the opportunity for artistic expression. If you don’t have it that opportunity and you are an artist it’s really terrible, this is again, the purpose of my theatre company. I think this will resonate with audiences because people get that.
Emily Hinkler, left, and Elizabeth Hinkler. September 24th, 2013. Photo Credit: The Daily Iowan/Wanyi Tao.
What kind of changes did you make as you began to see My Sister live in it’s various venues?
When writing a research based play you have to consider: how much informaion is too much so it becomes too expositional? You’ll discover something and you think, ‘Oh, my gosh this is so interesting, this is so amazing, people should know about this!’ but it might not be right for your play. And you have to consider how much history do people living today know? How much do I have to teach them so that they understand what’s going on? Also, there are so many words that are so loaded, like ‘Nazi,’ you can’t say ‘Nazi’ without all of the weight, cultural significance and history it evokes. So in the play I say, ‘National Socialist’ as often as possible because I want the audience to see them as an annoying political party that just might go away instead of boxing them up and putting them away as, Nazis. The hope is for people to think and reflect a little bit more.
This [2016] version at the Odyssey Theatre, with Paul David Story and Ron Sossi co-directing, is different in that Ron wanted to enhance the cabaret scenes. I agreed because it offered an opportunity for that one character to show more of her experiences giving us more of the outside world, we still have the heart of the play but as we expanded these scenes we get more of the body too.
Tell me about the songs in My Sister?
Emily Hinkler. Photo Credit: Maria Vorhis.
My composer is Dr. Christopher Gene Okiishi a child psychiatrist who lives and practices in Iowa City. He is also a gifted musician and we’ve worked together on other projects. I asked him to write the music. I wanted to use original music. It was fun to write the lyrics from the time period, making them sound like they have been translated from German. The function of the music is to show the cabaret scenes and comment on that era. The cabaret songs advance your understanding of how difficult it might be to perform a politically controversial piece in front of an audience that’s becoming less appreciative of such things or at least more fearful of being discovered enjoying those particular things. There are also some German folk songs that the girls sing together in the apartment and my favorite song is “If I Were A Little Bird” which is sung at the end.
Do you have any favorite moments in My Sister?
I have two favorite moments. The first one is when Matilde fully expresses the fear that she been carrying. And the second is when Magda comes to the realization of how things are. They perform them beautifully—and those are my two favorite moments.
The expanded version of My Sister at the Odyssey Theatre runs from January 16th to March 6th 2016. Ron Sossi and Paul David Story co-direct identical twins Elizabeth Hinkler and Emily Hinkler in Schlapkohl’s poignant tale of two sisters in pre-war Germany. For reservations and information, call (310) 477-2055 or go to www.OdysseyTheatre.com.
