"Love is the ultimate re-occurring theme weaving throughout our history," Robert Haxton says, puffing on a cigarette.
"To ignore our history, to me, is to deny our humanity." He flicks the ash off the end of his cigarette. "It’s disrespectful not to remember what people have gone through."
"Love is the ultimate re-occurring theme weaving throughout our history," Robert Haxton says, puffing on a cigarette.
"To ignore our history, to me, is to deny our humanity." He flicks the ash off the end of his cigarette. "It’s disrespectful not to remember what people have gone through."
Haxton is currently studying toward a Masters degree in Directing at Rhodes University. His latest project, a play called Bent, opens on Thursday night at the Rhodes Theatre.
"This play is my life," he exclaims dramatically. "I’ve been wanting to direct it for four years." Written by American playwright Martin Sherman in 1979, Bent tells the story of Max, a gay politician living in 1930s Berlin.
While fleeing the city after the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, Max and his partner are captured by the Gestapo.
His partner is killed and Max is taken to Dachau, Germany’s first concentration camp. Max believes his chances of survival in the camp are stronger if he is not assigned the pink triangle, which was used by the Nazis to identify homosexual men, so he tries to convince the guards that he’s Jewish.
While imprisoned at Dachau, Max meets Horst, a gay man who shows Max that he can still retain his dignity by not denying all that he is.
Haxton describes Bent as a story – a journey – about love and remembering. He hopes that, like Max, the audience will experience a change of perspective.
According to Haxton, it is not only important to remember what happened to homosexuals during the Holocaust, but it is important that we never let it happen again.
"A perspective can change the way we relate to each other," he explains. "We have the privilege of perspective and experience."
Sherman was one of the first writers to publically acknowlege the persecution of homosexuals during the Nazi rule. Haxton credits Sherman and Bent with transforming the pink triangle into a symbol of gay pride.
Although he believes times have changed, he says this certainly doesn’t mean that persecution against gay and lesbian people doesn’t happen.
"This play resonates so extremely with what some people are going through. There is still a lot of discrimination. Plays like this remind us how bad things can get."
Having said this, Bent is more than a play about persecution. "It has much more to do with the meaning of self," wrote London Theatre reviewer Peter Brown, "our responsibilities to others, and how we handle impossible situations which put our very existence at risk."
Bent will be performed on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7pm at the Rhodes Theatre.
