A Bright Room Called Day

"A Bright Room Called Day" is a play by American playwright Tony Kushner, author of the better-known "Angels in America".

ynopsis

The play is set in Germany in 1932 and 1933, and concerns a group of friends caught up in the events of the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. The plot is centered around a woman named Agnes Eggling, a middle-aged actress, and all of the action takes place in her apartment. The action is occasionally interrupted by scenes featuring Zillah, a young woman in 1990 who has moved from Long Island to Berlin. Zillah has fled to Germany out of frustration and anger at the growing power of the Republican party in America during the 1980s.

The play was based on Bertolt Brecht's 1938 work The Private Life of the Master Race.

Production history

"A Bright Room Called Day" was first presented in a workshop production by Heat & Light Co., Inc., at Theatre 22 in New York City in April 1985, directed by Kushner himself.

The play premiered at the Eureka Theatre in San Francisco, California in October 1987, directed by Oskar Eustis.

In January 1991, it was produced at the Joseph Papp Public Theater by the New York Shakespeare Festival, where it was directed by Michael Greif.

The segments of the play set in the 1930s remained substantially the same throughout the various productions, but Zillah's interruptions changed drastically from version to version. Her scenes were the primary point of contention for critics of the show, some of whom took offense at her comparisons of Ronald Reagan to Adolf Hitler.