Northwestern University's production of Lillian Groag's drama Aimée and Jaguar is a world premiere that isn't quite a world premiere. It may be the first fully-staged production of this based-upon-a-true-story tale of two women who fall in love under the Third Reich in World War II, but American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco ultimately has the right to produce the "professional world premiere" of Aimée and Jaguar for a future season.
Nonetheless, playwright Groag, a native of Argentina, is happy to be working again with director Joseph Hanreddy ( former artistic director of Milwaukee Repertory Theater ) on Aimée and Jaguar in Evanston.
The true story behind Aimée and Jaguar is an intriguing one that would initially appear mismatched on paper. It involves Lily Wust, a German soldier's wife and a mother of four, and Felice Schragenheim, a Jewish woman living on the edge with fake identification papers. Their love affair was previously documented in a book of interviews conducted by Erica Fischer, and was later adapted into a 1999 art-house film called Aimée and Jaguar. ( These were the names of endearment that they gave each other. )
Both Groag and Hanreddy had seen the film, but their intension behind creating a stage version of Aimée and Jaguar was not to copy the movie. And though neither artist is gay, the story of Aimée and Jaguar is one that speaks to both of them.
"The first thing for me was to really write a play about the nature of love," Groag said during a recent telephone interview. "I'm interested in why this person and not another person. How do we pick, if you pick, our love interests—and by that I mean erotic, sexual and romantic love. How does that happen? And what are the perfect circumstances for a grand passionate love affair versus something chaste and sedate?"
"One of the things that I like so much about the play is it really does explore the contradictory nature of attraction and love in the two central characters who are such polar opposites," Hanreddy said. "If it was today, there would be no online dating service that would have matched them up. They were a couple whose love for each other was genuine and passionate, but objectively they virtually had nothing in common."
According to Hanreddy, the students working on Aimée and Jaguar are really enjoying the experience and identifying with the characters.
"The majority of characters in the play are about the students' age and so it's something that they connect to, and much of the play is about youth and youth being curtailed," Hanreddy said. "The circumstances in which they fall in love during the dying days of the Third Reich and the Nazi clampdown on everyone that was deemed undesirable is sort of a cauldron or crucible that just intensifies everything about life. So it shines a bright light on this relationship when no one, under this Allied bombing attacks that were happening every day, could imagine that they would survive."
In addition to being a playwright, Groag is also an esteemed international opera director ( her credits for Chicago Opera Theater include Handel's dark comedy Agrippina and his oratorio La Resurrezione ). Though Groag bemoans the fact that her writing sometimes comes secondary to her directing duties, Hanreddy sees her directing experience as a bonus.
"I enjoy talking with her about the way in which we're connecting and telling the story and what the story has to say and the design solutions," Hanreddy said. "She has a ready understanding of stagecraft and so I enjoy those conversations."
Groag is also happy to be expanding the repertory for lesbian and bisexual stories in the theater as an unintended consequence of writing Aimée and Jaguar. It was something she only realized at a workshop reading of her play at American Conservatory Theater when a lesbian stage manager personally thanked her for tackling the story.
"There's a fistful of plays, especially on Broadway, about gay men, gay men coming out, and almost nothing about women," Groag said. "That became a secondary interest because it wasn't something I knew about, and I think it should be corrected."
And though Aimée and Jaguar is often billed as a "lesbian romance" ( Hanreddy jokes that it's always recommended to his lesbian friends who are Netflix subscribers ), Groag and Hanreddy are working to make the case that it's one that anyone can identify with and understand.
"It's a love story between two women that completely universalizes the notion of love," Hanreddy said. "So that straight couples or gay men or anybody can watch the way and apply what they're seeing to their own feelings and experiences."
Aimée and Jaguar plays from Friday, Jan. 31, through Sunday, Feb. 9, at Northwestern University's Josephine Louis Theater, 20 Arts Circle, Evanston. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays. Playwright Lillian Groag appears in two post-show talkback discussions on Jan. 31 and Feb. 2. Tickets are $25, $22 for seniors and $10 for students. Call 847-491-7282 or visit www.communication.northwestern.edu .
