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“The Rocket Men” — about the former Nazis who built the foundations of NASA, and the convenient way we forget uncomfortable history — opens at the Oregon Contemporary Theatre this weekend.
The red sands of Mars danced in rocket scientist Wernher von Braun’s imagination.
That far-away planet; the promise of a space-faring society, with fantastical technology to explore the stars; the prospect of a Tomorrowland built atop an alien world, like the one he had envisioned for Walt Disney’s Anaheim wonderland but made real.
For an ambitious man like von Braun, who both made his name and wiped away his unseemly past as an S.S. officer in the Nazi Party through tandem scientific genius and savvy image-making, a vision of the future on the red planet loomed large.
What loomed less for von Braun and the Americans who bought into his promise of winning the space race, is the historical record at the heart of “The Rocket Men,” a new play opening this weekend at the Oregon Contemporary Theatre.
The original German V-2 rockets that were the basis for the American space program, as von Braun was loath to admit after he became an American, were built in a tunnel complex at the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in Germany where 20,000 people died.
This tension between the abstract good of scientific progress and the concrete, often exploitative, conditions forging that progress is what first interested playwright Crystal Skillman.
It started in a gift shop.
Skillman, a New York City-based playwright in Eugene for the West Coast premiere of “The Rocket Men,” started writing the play after a trip to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. No exhibit mentioned the specifics of how the V-2s were built.
But a book she picked up in the gift shop, “The Rocket Team,” talked about Mittelbau-Dora in the language that defined much of the convenient forgetting that allowed von Braun to build his life in the United States: It was war, and they did what they had to do, and it’s over now.
“This is the Americans’ PR angle,” Skillman said. “They love that he is at the forefront of talking about space travel. They really don’t want the American public to be like, ‘Oh, and he also was an S.S. officer.’ They just don’t want that to be a part of the story.”
Written to be played by women
Skillman’s protagonist isn’t von Braun, but Heinz-Hermann Koelle, a younger German scientist who came to Alabama at von Braun’s invitation. The two exchanged letters for years, signing off with their initials as they shared their visions for exploring Mars that von Braun wrote in his science fiction book, “The Mars Project.”
It’s through Koelle, who wasn’t a part of the V-2 construction and lived for years in a post-war Germany that acknowledged its Nazi past, that the audience experiences the “new Americans” bristling at any mention of the war.
While this history is played close to life, there’s one key difference between the real rocket men and the cast playing them. The entire ensemble — Koelle, von Braun and his German émigré compatriots who came with him to the United States in the waning years of World War II in the clandestine Operation Paperclip, as well as a Jewish engineer unafraid to voice his objections — are written by Skillman to be played by women. (Melanie Moser, the performer playing German scientist William Mrazek, is nonbinary.)
That gender angle was key for Skillman, who didn’t want to write a straightforward history play. Casting women allows for some distance for the viewer, she said, and provides an opportunity to examine some of the “Mad Men”-style “bro” culture in male-dominated workspaces.
The scientists’ work is made possible by offstage wives ironing their pants, as the men concentrate on their important work (and also bro hug, drink liquor and read “Buck Rogers” comic books at work).
Director Inga Wilson said the gender angle also was key for the production, both from a physical standpoint and a narrative one.
“Seeing women tell this male-dominated story, I thought, was really powerful for thinking about those women who have gone through the cracks of history,” she said.
For Skillman, it was after doing more research on Mittelbau-Dora, and particularly the labor of women and children that went into making the missiles, that the gender decision gained more weight. The last 20 minutes of the play (no spoilers), which Skillman described as “arresting,” hinge on the ability to invoke the uncredited women who physically built the grand plans von Braun and others dreamed up.
“I was entertained by this idea of playing women when we’re still in workshops,” she said. “That’s when I was like, ‘No, they have to be women.’”
A rolling premiere hits Oregon
“The Rocket Men” opens in Eugene after previous runs at Indianapolis and Atlanta, as part of the National New Play Network’s rolling world premiere program.
For performers in the cast, a new play and a lack of precedent presents both an acting challenge and opportunity.
“As an actor, if you come into a show, a lot of times it’s cookie cutter, fill the spot, do the thing that everyone’s done the whole time,” said Kathleen Borrelli, who plays von Braun’s protégé Koelle. “The ability to actually create is really cool.”
But the play’s run at Oregon Contemporary Theatre is more than another premiere: It’s a prime example of how theaters across the country are stepping in to help the development of new plays. Theater spaces and investment in original work have dwindled in cultural centers like New York City, especially as stages are increasingly home to celebrities embarking on theater projects.
Skillman, who has had a front-row seat to shifts in resources for mounting original plays, said that the runs in other cities and now Eugene are critical for her development of a new play like “The Rocket Men.”
“They are filling in the gaps of the fabric of American theater in massive ways,” Skillman said. “OCT (Oregon Contemporary Theatre) is a forefront of that.”
How to see ‘The Rocket Men’
The play opens Saturday, Jan. 17 and runs through Sunday, Feb. 1, with performances on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at the Oregon Contemporary Theatre, 194 W. Broadway, Eugene.
Tickets are available online and start at $25, with better seats available for $42 to $52.
