Hannah and Martin

Are there limits to freedom of speech? How do emotions bend morals? What are the perils of personal idolatry and misplaced romanticism? How can really smart people still be deluded? These are just some of the probing questions posed by Kate Fodor in her emotionally transfixing and critically acclaimed 2003 debut play. Taking advantage of recent historical research, Fodor uses her imagination to examine the facts of the long, secret relationship between two towering figures of 20th-century thought. Passion and principle clash as Jewish intellectual Hannah Arendt, who had to flee her native Germany as Hitler rose to power, struggles across a vast ideological divide to justify her enduring feelings for Nazi-sympathizing philosopher Martin Heidegger, her former mentor and sometime lover. As it spans the horrors of the Holocaust and its aftermath, Fodor’s argumentative play bristles with insights and, rather then rendering judgment, leaves us to ponder the painful complexities of life. Timothy Near directs.