LENI
The Reich stuff (both on and off the screen).
BY BEN WATERHOUSE | bwaterhouse at wweek.com

[October 18th, 2006] Leni Riefenstahl, genius filmmaker, Nazi propagandist, primitivist and artistic enigma, is one of the more bizarre characters to emerge from the chaos of interwar Europe. She began her career as a dancer and actress and made a few highly lauded films before hooking up with Hitler in 1933. He commissioned her to make Triumph of the Will and Olympia, widely regarded as two of the most effective propaganda films ever made. She went on to film Nazi troops in the fields and use concentration-camp victims in her epic, Tiefland. After the war, Riefenstahl denied any knowledge of the Third Reich's politics or war crimes, claiming that she was only interested in beauty. Banned from making films, she pursued still photography until her 100th birthday, when she released an underwater documentary.

Riefenstahl remained a controversial figure until her death in 2003, praised as an artistic genius by Andy Warhol and reviled as a...well...Nazi by Susan Sontag. Now the ever-intriguing Insight Out Theatre Collective (ONE, Cornered in the Dark) presents the world premiere of LENI, a two-woman exploration of Riefenstahl's Nazi years by local actor and director Sarah Greenman, a fictional attempt to reconcile the conflicting aspects of her character.

The play—which revolves around a conceit of Riefenstahl directing an 'autobiopic' in purgatory—features JoAnn Johnson (Wit, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and Cecily Overman (ONE), both in the title role. In keeping with the cinematic spirit of the work, Greenman is presenting the show in the newly renovated Academy Theatre, allowing the production to make extensive use of projection. 'The cinema is [Riefenstahl's] natural habitat,' says Greenman, 'the perfect setting for her own special hereafter.'

Riefenstahl's story raises issues that are of increasing relevance in our own dark times. 'LENI began as a means to answer my own personal questions about the responsibilities and dangers of creating art,' says Greenman. 'Questions like: What is art and what exactly does an artist make? What rules are they bound by and what are their responsibilities? What known and unknown things will we be held accountable for?' With any luck, Greenman's ruminations on Riefenstahl's aesthetic journey will bring us a little closer to some answers.

Insight Out Theatre Collective at the Academy Theatre, 7818 SE Stark St., 493-8070. 8:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays; 1 pm Sunday, Oct. 29; 10:30 am Wednesday, Nov. 1. Opens Oct. 20. $15.