Because I can’t seem to stay in one place for two weeks straight, I spent Saturday night in Philadelphia at a friend’s house. After going to the theater to watch a play about fascism and domestic violence.
Which are interwoven.
The play was “Camp Siegfried” at Theatre Exile. Written by Bess Wohl, it is based on a summer romance at a real camp for Nazi youth run by the American German Bund on Long Island from 1936 to 1941.
With just two characters and a bare-bones set, the inculcation of fascism and its mirroring within young love is placed center stage.
Children trained to withstand abuse by their parents grow into abusers in front of our complicit eyes.
It was hard to watch.
And achingly familiar in so many ways.
She was 16, he was 17.
The thing that made me bristle most?
The way he kept calling her a dummy over and over again until she started calling herself a dummy.
This is how abuse works.
It can look a lot like teasing. In fact, I’m not entirely sure what the difference is.
Why do w…
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