"<i>A Civil War Christmas</i>: An American Musical Celebration" Limelight — Collaborators in Conversation

Peter DuBois

Throughout this season, our program will feature artists interviewing other artists working at the Huntington. Below, Huntington Artistic Director Peter DuBois talks with playwright Paula Vogel, author of A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration and Peter's former mentor at Brown University. This interview has been edited for space; please find the full article here.

Paula Vogel
    Peter DuBois: This is your second production of A Civil War Christmas. You have some provocative notions about the value of second and third productions.
    Paula Vogel: I don’t think plays are ever finished. Maybe by the thirdproduction, the playwright says, “Okay—I think I’ve had it.” The thrillingthing about a second production is to see a different actor playing Lincolnor Bronson or Keckley. Can I make the role so specific that it will fit allactors who play it? That really does take separate productions and differentcommunities to listen to the response.

    Another reason a play isn’t finished is that the questions shift in waysoutside my control. For example, it was very meaningful doing A Civil War Christmas during the last election. There’s something very different about doing A Civil War Christmas in the aftermath of the election while peopleare attending town halls with signs saying, “Civil rights or civil war.” People are talking literally about seceding from the Union, so there will be a different resonance about Lincoln and a different level of anxiety about possible violence. There’s no way artists can foretell [what will happen]; we hope we’re creating work that continues the conversation that is in our neighborhood at this moment in time.
    PD: Where did the idea for this show come from?
    PV: It was a blink. Molly Smith had just gotten the job [as artistic director] at Arena Stage, and I started talking to her about Washington, D.C.’s amazing history. It isn’t really a town; it’s a national home. Living there, you really feel the Civil War was just yesterday. I said to Molly, “Why is everyone doing A Christmas Carol?" And, it came in a blink: Christmas during the Civil War. I’ve gone to every battlefield. I know just about every single CivilWar ballad from growing up in D.C. and Maryland. And I remembered “O, Maryland, My Maryland”—which is a secessionist song and [although it is the state’s current anthem,] the lyrics still have not been changed—and “O Tannenbaum” are sung to the same tune. I took a crayon on this paper table cloth at dinner and I wrote the outline on the table. That was in 1997. How that happens, I don’t know. I wrote the text in 2006, so the research took, I guess, nine years.

    As a country, we have no memory. [As I began writing the play,] I started thinking about issues of race, poverty, and social justice at Christmastime. I was dealing with this sense of mourning over Katrina and alarm over the immigration debates. Now, we’re shifting to healthcare and the recession, but all of this is still informed by who gets the resources and who doesn’t. Our attention shifts, but the basic inequity is still the same.
    PD: Absolutely. It’s the role of the artist in culture to look at these seemingly disconnected or disparate events and to see that there’s a core narrative driving through all of them. And your piece just continues to evolve.
    PV: I want to be ambitious. As audience members, we often aren’t asked to be ambitious, and so there may be some irritation in being asked to follow four plotlines; I can understand that. We’re so used to entertainment that basically cuts up our meat for us and mashes our potatoes. What happens to us as audience members when there’s something that’s not completely pre-digested for us? It’s hard for me to say.

    The Civil War is still with us. There is no voting representation for the District of Columbia. Where does that come from? That comes from the African-Americans who fled slavery and crossed the river into the United States. Congress was alarmed to give African-Americans direct representation. So the Civil War is just yesterday, or actually it’s today, if you’re in Washington, D.C.

    I am incredibly wounded at the polarization, at people who weep, “I want my country back.” I don’t have a solution. The only thing that I want to ask is: do you think we can face what happened over 150 years ago in this country and actually take it to the next step, for our children and our children’s children? Do you think we’re going to be able to move to the next chapter as a country? That’s the only real question I have.
    PD: It’s a profound one.
    PV: I think we’re at a point in time of incredible civic danger and we’ve got to talk. I think that this is part and parcel of us losing civility and dialogue. We have to fight for the importance of the arts because it is civility indiscourse. It calls on us to be emotionally accessible and vulnerable and responsive to each other.
    PD: I think [at the Huntington] we’re finding the strategies to redefine how the artist is protected and appreciated. A big part of that is throwing back the curtain and opening up the process to the audience. Boston has a sense of friendship, alliance, and emotional connection with artists in the same way that we do with our sports teams. If we can really focus on core groups of artists that we feel a sense of kinship with, the audience develops a relationship with them over time, which I think is critical.
    PV: You know, in the past 26 years, I’ve become a New Englander. I teach at Yale University. I live part time in Branford, Connecticut and Providence, Rhode Island; I’m actually a resident of Truro, Massachusetts. There’s a pride I have of living my life in New England. There’s a pride I have of living in towns where people still make their living from the sea. This is a unique place. There is an incredible historical legacy here. I am in awe ofthe fact that you’re doing this play in a theatre built in 1925 in a town where the Revolution was started. It is meaningful to be invited into the Huntington, and to be able to work in the state where I live. By paying attention to our homes, to where we live and where we work, maybe we can start a conversation of national impact. We can point to New Englanders’ impact in the world of arts and in our civic conversation as American citizens.
    PD: I grew up in Connecticut, and you and I met at Brown University. I feel that New England is my home as well, and that it’s historically been at the forefront of change for the country. Here in Boston and in New England, I believe we’re really at the hub of great thinking that can have an incredible impact on the future of the country. And, we’re so proud to have you here, Paula.
    PV: I’m so proud to be at the Huntington. I’m so proud to be working with you.