cally coherent in two hours.
To do that, the play moves
swiftly from one point in time
to weeks or months later. In
a way, the staging shows just
how crazy that period of time
was. Absolutely. I worked hard
in terms of making sure it was all
historically accurate to an extent.
You have to include huge events
like getting into World War I and
getting out of the war, but they
weren’t necessarily huge events
that I wanted to dramatize with
Edith’s point of view on them.
It was a period of American history which is 100 years old now
and some people know and a
lot of people don’t. The Great
War, as it was called, is vitally important as is Woodrow Wilson’s
presidency. We were an isolationist country and Wilson took
us into the modern power we
are now. I was trying to tell as
much of that history, while makNewJerseyStage.com
ing sure it was understandable
and not glib against the backdrop of his great romance.
What also fascinated me about
the story was how the personal
affects the political. How Woodrow Wilson may have been the
most powerful person in the
world, but he was still a human
being. He was grieving the loss
of his first wife and fell in love
with a strong-willed woman,
and those two personalities controlled world events.
Can you imagine the fallout today if a President had a
stroke and the administration
tried hiding it? I just think you
couldn’t. If Obama was gone for
three days, the media scrutiny
would be intense. You could
never get away with saying
he’s suffering exhaustion. You
wouldn’t last more than a week
if something like this happened.
2015 - ISSUE 11
ARTICLES
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