Produced in collaboration with Wake Forest University

The past and present collide in this elegant, psychological mystery, as Dr. Katherine Brandt tries to uncover the truth behind the creation of Beethoven's Variations.  Shifting back and forth between present day in Bonn, Germany, and 19th century Vienna where Beethoven is composing, Katherine becomes obsessed with completing her life's work - and with resolving her relationship with her daughter - before an illness overtakes her.  An onstage pianist playing the Variations live provides elegant counterpoint to Katherine's journey in this collaboration with Wake Forest University and N.C. premiere of the recent Broadway hit.

Welcome to Festival Stage, and to 33 Variations by Moisés Kaufman. The play had its premiere at Arena Stage in Washington DC in 2007, and then traveled to La Jolla Playhouse on the West Coast before opening on Broadway in 2009. That production was nominated for five Tony Awards including Best Play. The play also received the 2007 Edgerton New American Play Award, and the 2008 Harold and Mimi Steinberg American Theatre Critics Association Award. This season 33 Variations is being produced in regional theatres all over the United States.

Over the past two decades, Kaufman and his company, the Tectonic Theatre Project, have explored new ways of theatrical storytelling, gaining major recognition with Gross Indecency: Three Trials of Oscar Wilde and The Laramie Project.  Reviewing The Laramie Project in The New York Times, Ben Brantley wrote that “as Mr. Kaufman demonstrated with Gross Indecency, he has a remarkable gift for giving a compelling theatrical flow to journalistic and historical material. And here he again finds the implicit music in repeated phrases and themes." With 33 Variations, the music is not just implied, it's central to this story of Katherine, a musicologist who becomes obsessed with finding out why Beethoven wrote The Diabelli Variations. The play travels back and forth between the two time periods, and moves freely in and out of the characters' minds – limited in its structure only by their need to learn, to grow, to create. The people – like the play itself – are sailing uncharted waters, exploring new territory beyond the edges of the known map.

In a Gothamist interview, Kaufman said, "We need new theatrical forms, we need new ways of expressing our ideas. We still have so much work to do in trying to freely figure out how theatre speaks, so, to me, this play is an exercise in that. It's a play with music, it's a play with dancing, it's a play with singing, it's a play with video... It really tries to redefine how the theatrical space is used. I think people are hungry to have intelligent conversations in the theatre." At a time when the theatre can compete for attention and funding in today's market only by exploiting its essence, its unique properties, work like 33 Variations helps explore the possibilities.

Welcome also to the first collaboration between Festival Stage and Wake Forest University Theatre. John E.R. Friedenburg, Brook Davis and I first began to talk about this idea in 2011 around a table at Krankie's Coffee. We were looking for a project that neither organization would be likely to tackle alone, a true collaboration. Nearly two years and lots of caffeine later, the project has grown to include not only WFU Theatre but also members of the music faculty as well as the Wake Medical School's ALS Center, led by Dr. James Caress. You'll find more about them elsewhere in this program, and I thank each of them for their partnership. I also want to give a special nod to Louis Goldstein at the piano, who is – thanks to Mr. Kaufman's inventiveness – as much a character in the play as any of the actors.

33 Variations is about many things: creativity, obsession, mortality, potential, reconciliation.  And it's about change. At one point in the play, Katherine considers the idea of "transfiguration" – of becoming "your better self." Some years ago a friend from Johannesburg took me to meet and hear a presentation by Father Michael Lapsley, a South African priest and activist against the then-current atrocities of Apartheid. Because of his work, Father Michael had been the victim of a mail bomb and had lost both of his hands and the sight in one eye, yet his spirit and resolve were as strong as ever. In fact, because of what happened, he had found his life's work, his place in the world, his better self. "I am a better priest with no hands," he said, "than I ever was with two." The characters in 33 Variations are all looking for their better selves, and they too experience losses and isolation that ultimately help them find their way. They –  and the play itself –  are reminders that transfiguration may be more a reality than a dream for those who truly seek it.

Steve Umberger

Nominee for the 2009 Tony Award for Best Play

Winner of the Edgerton New American Play Award

Winner of the 2008 American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), often called “Lou Gehrig’s Disease” in the U.S., is among the most feared diseases because it robs people of their ability to move, talk, swallow and breathe.  The cause is unknown and there are no treatments that have a major impact on the progression of the disease. It usually starts with weakness in an arm or leg and inexorably spreads, like a cancer, to the other limbs and, eventually, to the muscles that control speaking and breathing.  It is uncommon, but far from rare, with about 500 people diagnosed each year in North Carolina. The average lifespan is three years from the beginning of symptoms; and the average age of onset is 55 though it can affect people in their 20s.   It is a uniformly fatal illness that cannot be “beaten” by any form of radical treatments.

ALS belongs to a family of diseases known as neurodegenerative diseases, which include Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.  In each of these, specific types of nerve cells malfunction. In ALS, brain and spinal cord cells called motor neurons are most prominently affected, resulting in weakness.  There are no treatments that substantially protect motor neurons from malfunction and death.  Up to 10 percent of ALS cases are clearly genetic running strongly in families, but most ALS researchers believe that the other 90 percent of cases occur when multiple genes, perhaps five to 20, are altered in a particular pattern.  The rate of ALS gene discovery has increased dramatically in the past five years, with each discovery providing new insights into possible targets for treatment.

Delays in diagnosis (ALS is typically diagnosed a year after symptoms start) and the many differences in the underlying cause have made ALS a difficult disease to treat.  Currently, stem-cell injections into the spinal cord, gene therapies and traditional drugs that either stabilize motor neuron function or sustain nerve-muscle connections are under study in ALS patients across the world.  Most ALS researchers envision a “cocktail” of partially effective interventions targeting different pathologies in ALS that will stabilize the disease. 

James B. Caress, MD
Associate Professor of Neurology
Director, ALS Center
Wake Forest School of Medicine

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), extraordinary composer, was also an ordinary mortal facing health challenges, bills and difficult relationships.  Son and grandson of musicians for the electoral court at Bonn, Beethoven began his musical studies as a young child. At 16 he traveled to Vienna to advance his career, but was summoned home in two weeks due to his mother’s grave illness. Following his mother’s death, with his father declining into alcoholism, Beethoven assumed responsibility for his two younger brothers.

In 1792 Beethoven moved permanently to Vienna. While making his reputation as a performer and composer, Beethoven was plagued by a number of health problems, most notably, a gradual loss of hearing accompanied by tinnitus. Beethoven endeavored to keep his humiliating disability secret. In 1801 Beethoven confided to a friend that his difficulty hearing caused him to avoid socializing. In an 1802 document Beethoven described contemplating suicide due to the burden of his deafness, but his art held him back. Ultimately unable to conceal his deafness, Beethoven relied on associates writing down their parts of a conversation. As deafness eventually limited his ability to perform and conduct, Beethoven concentrated on composition, though daily life sometimes interfered. He needed to negotiate with music publishers and cultivate patrons. He pursued romances but never married, changed apartments frequently, and engaged in a bitter battle with his sister-in-law for custody of his nephew following his brother’s death.

33 Variations offers a glimpse of Beethoven’s dominating passion for his art, despite the distractions of everyday life. The play also includes a musicologist, who is similar to Beethoven in her obsession with her work, and, like Beethoven, reminds us that even the greatest artist or scholar has more to learn, and demonstrates the vastness of the human spirit in contrast with the frailty of the human body.

J.K. Curry, Production Dramaturg
Chair, Department of Theatre and Dance
Wake Forest University

Ludwig van Beethoven composed movements using theme and variation technique throughout his entire career. Indeed, the challenge of coming up with novel ways of formally embellishing melodies was one sure measure of a composer’s skill. The art of composing variations on a theme can be traced back at least to the 16th century, and extends to the present day. The state of the art of its time for an independent set of keyboard variations was Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations (1741), a compendium based on a theme called “Aria.” That Beethoven knew this work well is evidenced in a number of ways, not least of all by the sarabande-like theme of the final movement of his Piano Sonata in E Major, op. 109, itself a set of variations. Beethoven similarly closed his last Piano Sonata, op. 111 with a set of variations on a theme labeled “Arietta.”

It can safely be said that Beethoven, in composing the Diabelli Variations (1819-1823), along with the aforementioned movements from his Piano Sonatas and other “late” works, broke the mold of theme and variation form. The sheer number of variations he composed on Diabelli’s waltz theme (when only one was requested!) only tells part of the story. In the latter stage of Beethoven’s compositional career, he exploded the form from within by going far beyond the merely decorative. Each variation stands as its own character piece that explores not only the external shape of the theme, but its inner life, penetrating to its barest essence. That he did this both with the precision of an electron microscope (Var. XX), high-spirited humor, virtuosity and deepest profundity, speaks to the work of a master whose imagination took him to worlds never before believed possible.

David B. Levy
Professor of Music
Wake Forest University