Interview: Playwright Jenny Lyn Bader and MRS. STERN WANDERS THE PRUSSIAN STATE LIBRARY

Luna-Stage/">Luna Stage is having their NY premiere of Jenny Lyn Bader’s Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library, directed by Ari Laura Kreith. The show runs at 59E59 Theaters from October 18th  to November 10th  for 25 performances in a limited engagement. 

The story is set in Berlin, 1933. With martial law in effect, political activism has become a capital crime. A young Gestapo officer arrests a graduate student suspected of illegal research. This interrogation promises to be most challenging as he faces the iconic 20th-century thinker Hannah Arendt. Is she an innocent woman? Or an enemy of the state? Inspired by real events, this fantastical drama delves into the life and mind of one of history’s most profound thinkers.

Broadwayworld had the opportunity to interview Jenny Lyn Bader about her career and the upcoming show at 59E59 Theaters.

Jenny Lyn Bader is a playwright living in New York City. Her work has been produced across the U.S. and internationally. Her plays include Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library (59E59 Theaters), Equally Divine: The Real Story of the Mona Lisa (14th St. Y), In Flight (Workshop Theatre), Manhattan Casanova (Hudson Stage), and None of the Above (New Georges). One-acts include Worldness (Humana Festival), Beta Testing (Symphony Space), and Miss America (NY Int’l Fringe, “Best of Fringe” selection). Audio productions include Communal Table (Broadway Podcast Network) and Tree Confessions (This is Not a Theatre Co., w/ Kathleen Chalfant). Her work has been published by Dramatists Play Service, Next Stage Press, Smith & Kraus, Vintage, Applause, Plays International & Europe, Lincoln Center Theater Review, and The New York Times, where she was a frequent contributor to the “Week in Review.” A Harvard graduate, she has received the “Best Documentary One-Woman Show” Award (United Solo Fest), Athena Playwriting Fellowship, Edith Oliver Award (O’Neill Center), Randall Wreghitt Award (Theatre Resources Unlimited), and Lark Playwriting Fellowship (nominated by Wendy Wasserstein). Jenny Lyn was co-founder of the multicultural, multilingual company Theatre 167. She belongs to the Dramatists Guild, the League of Professional Theatre Women, and Honor Roll.

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Who was the very first person to realize your writing talents?

I think outside of family, the very first person was my second-grade teacher who gave out a different award to each kid. Mine was “Novelist of the Year,” indicating she appreciated my short stories and perhaps implying that some of them were long. Then in 7th grade, the school principal of our K-12 sent me a very official-looking letter on his letterhead, saying my poem about the water shortage (printed in our middle school paper) was the best he had seen on the subject, and asking if I had thought of submitting it to The New York Times? I had not, didn’t know how, and didn’t. But if you mean in playwriting, I think it was a girl named Debby who starred in the play I wrote at summer camp when I was 16, and then took it upon herself to direct the play at her school the following year. So when I was a high school senior in New York, I traveled to her school in Massachusetts and saw what it was like to have a show go out of town. 

Have you had any particular mentors?

Yes, I’ve been lucky to find a few. Kate Harper, a director who was the theatre counselor at my summer camp, was my first theatre mentor. Then after college one of my first jobs was working as Wendy Wasserstein’s assistant and she became a wonderful mentor, full of insight about life in the theatre and life in general. She would give me suggestions about how to revise or where to send a play, or even offer to hand-deliver a script of mine to a literary department at a theatre where she was working. She recommended one script to a director named Ina Marlowe whom I never actually met until after Wendy died, but have gotten to work with since — and I’ve also worked with a director she is mentoring, Rhianna DeVries, so the cycle continues.  And Wendy nominated me for the Lark Playwriting Fellowship, where I encountered more mentors. Arthur Kopit, who led our workshops, spent so much energy helping fellow writers across generations and finding ways to keep us going. And one of the guest artists Arthur brought in was Tina Howe, who became a magical mentor to me with deep insight about the world of my plays. The Lark was basically set up to encourage mentoring. It’s sad it’s no longer around. Other places I’ve found that foster mentoring include the League of Professional Theatre Women; Theatre Resources Unlimited; and the O’Neill Center, where Lloyd Richards handed out dramaturgical insights the way someone else might hand out bonbons and also nominated me for prizes and fellowships he thought would help put my play on the map and get me to write more plays too. Writers groups have also been a source of mentoring support for me. I felt lucky when Scott Elliott, after reading a short play of mine, invited me to join the now-defunct Playwrights Unit at The New Group, where I began writing full-length works. That group was led by Kevin Scott during most of my time there. Now I’m in the Playwrights Gallery, led by Deborah Savadge. 

What piece of advice can you lend aspiring writers?

Try to let your subconscious mind take over the writing — and invite your conscious mind over the next day for the editing. 

What was your inspiration for writing Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library?

I was inspired by the visionary thinker Hannah Arendt — specifically by an interview she gave in 1973, where she speaks about what happened 40 years earlier when she was arrested by the Gestapo. The man who arrested her had just been promoted from the criminal police. So it’s his first political interrogation, and he has to interrogate Arendt! In the interview, she says very little about it, but just enough to spur me to imagine more. I began writing it as a scene for an event at the Anne Frank Center, a series of readings curated by Cindy Cooper called More Jewish Women You Should Know. The actress dropped out at the last minute, so I ended up being in the reading and not watching it. But later the scene was performed in a festival at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and I watched it and saw how to expand it into a full-length play.  

Why do you think the times are just right for this show?

Today we’re seeing increasing political polarization, rising Antisemitism, and the threat of totalitarian and authoritarian rule around the world. We’re also witnessing a crackdown on free expression and a policing of thought and language that should be alarming us, given how that turned out in the 1930’s. And people on all sides of the political spectrum are extremely concerned about attacks on the rule of law. Of course, I like to think of the play as timeless but it does feel especially timely at this moment… It also seems to me that interest in Hannah Arendt has reached new heights. She was just a character in the Netflix miniseries Transatlantic. An increasing number of people are attending in-person or virtual events, conferences, and reading groups at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. And I see Arendt more and more getting quoted everywhere, including recently on an “I Hate Taylor Swift” subreddit. Even one misquotation of hers, occasionally published with a photo that is not her, went viral with over 50,000 shares. But there’s a lot to quote correctly — though she didn’t live to see it, she has so much to say about today’s world. 

 Can you tell us a little about the team that is bringing the play to 59E59 Theaters?

Ari Laura Kreith is an astonishing director, a genius at finding the heart of a play. Her insights into this piece are staggering. I love her approach and her understanding of rhythm and cadence — she trained as a classical pianist and has an unerring ear and exquisite taste. She’s the Artistic Director of Luna-Stage/">Luna Stage, one of the few institutions truly dedicated to doing new work, and has put together an incredible design team, all of whom I’ve had the joy of working with before, some of them more than once, but never all at once: Scenic Designer Lauren Helpern, Lighting Designer Cameron Filepas, Sound Designer Megan Culley, and Costume Designer Deborah Caney. It feels momentous, like a major planetary alignment.

We'd love to hear a little bit about your future plans?

I’m working on a new play, this one not set in the historical past but “now-ish and soon-ish”… Later this month I have a short piece in the anniversary event of the World’s Fair Plays at Queens Theatre… On December 12th, I’m looking forward to being part of a League of Professional Theatre Women panel at the Drama Bookshop… And by next year, everyone will be able to experience my one-act “Something is Being Done,” inspired by Meredith Bergmann’s monument of the same name. That play was originally performed at the sculpture’s unveiling in Lexington, MA. The monument depicts 22 inspirational women whose stories have gone mostly untold all these years as tourists have been admiring men with muskets on the Battle Green. Now we’re working on a live event scheduled this spring and an audio version to be released in 2025, when we’ll all be marking the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. 

Anything else, absolutely anything you want BroadwayWorld readers to know!

You don’t need to know anything about any of the historical characters involved to see Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library! Just come enjoy. We say it’s for ages 16+ but it’s also appropriate for younger people if they’re interested in the subject matter. You can drop a line to info@lunastage if you’d like to get a copy of a study guide that has more information after seeing the play, or if you want some context to offer younger viewers or students beforehand. 

To learn more about Jenny Lyn Bader, please visit her website at www.jennylynbader.com and follow her on social media, X: @JennyLynBader and Instagram: @jennylynstagram

59E59 Theaters is located at 59 East 59th Street (between Park and Madison Avenues). Performances are Tue - Sat at 7:15pm, and Sat and Sun at 2:15pm, with an added matinee on Thu 11/7 at 2:15pm. Run time is approximately 90 minutes. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Jenny Lyn Bader

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