Truth Can Be 'Slippery' Onstage

Theater has always been a passion for Matthew I. Bohrer ’10. “Since I was a little kid I would be trying on costumes or putting together scenes for my friends to act out on the playground,” he says. Bohrer has acted on the stage since high school and has appeared in over a dozen productions at Harvard, but his first foray into writing and directing a play, the three-act “Slipping Away,” will premiere at the Loeb Experimental Theater on Jan. 8.

After acting for many years and attending summer programs at New York University’s Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute and the Yale School of Drama, Bohrer felt he had the tools to start writing his own pieces. “Knowing how to analyze and break down a script as an actor really made me feel ready to try my hand at writing,” he says. He began work on the content for “Slipping Away” in a creative playwriting class at Harvard, an experience which he sees as invaluable to his work. “Having the opportunity to have my plays workshopped by a dozen other dramaturgs was so important, because I do believe that playwriting is rewriting.”

“Slipping Away” is comprised of three one-act pieces exploring both what constitutes truth for different people and how theater as a medium communicates truth. The middle piece is based on a war crime in Iraq in which an American lieutenant was accused (and eventually acquitted) of wrongly executing two insurgents. Fragments of a two-sided narrative develop through the dialogue between the lieutenant and the sergeant who accuses him. Bohrer explores how to present the ambiguities of the story through theater. “Leaving things up to the imagination really draws the audience in,” he says. He stages much of his action in the dark and at one point plays flashlights across the audience to replicate the effect of blinding searchlights.

Another act focuses on a college professor who has experienced the trauma of a series of car accidents, while the third imagines a dystopian future. Though each has a different setting and plot, they are all connected by a common cast. Despite the distinct qualities of the characters in the different pieces, Bohrer found that some cast members suited themselves to similar roles in all three.

Bohrer’s acting experience informed his approach to writing. “I wanted to write characters that were fun for actors to play,” he says.

He drew on Harvard theater veterans and newcomers alike for his cast. “James [M.] Leaf [’10] and Julia [T.] Havard [’11] are the HRDC vets in the cast, so they demonstrate a strong understanding of the process for the other cast members,” he says. Meanwhile, Jeffrey J. Phaneuf ’10, a recruit of Bohrer’s, is one of several cast members appearing in his first dramatic piece at Harvard.

Bohrer realized quickly that his original vision of the script was going to evolve based on the actors’ portrayals of his characters. “It was, at first, hard to separate what I saw in my head as a writer with what the actor might be bringing to the script, but seeing these characters come to life has been such a great experience.”

Bohrer feels that theater offers possibilities not found in film or television. He hopes that through his staging and dynamic cast of characters, “Slipping Away” will make the most of these possibilities. “I want people to walk away from the show satisfied but questioning what they saw. And that’s something you can’t really produce in any other media.”