Leni’s Last Lament: Interview with Playwright Gil Kofman
“Leni’s Last Lament” is a darkly satirical play about German propagandist filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl who notoriously filmed footage for the Nazi Party and personally traveled in Adolf Hitler’s circles. Leni lived to be 101 years old and was known for her innovations in film, but her activities during World War II cast a shadow over her reputation. In this play, Leni presents herself as a misunderstood victim who attempts to justify and sanitize her past. The piece is presented as a comedic and macabre cabaret that takes place in Leni’s editing room.
Playwright Gil Kofman recently discussed this play via an exclusive interview.
Meagan Meehan (MM): How did you discover your talent for writing and why did the theater call to you?
Gil Kofman (GK): I’ve been writing ever since I can remember. But it’s taken a long time to reclaim the freedom of those early untutored years when I was guided more by impulse and instinct. At some point I tried my hand at fiction and had some stories published, but it was in theater that I felt most at home. Somehow the voices there resonated more loudly in my head. Theater, I think, is more a lonely person’s medium; just look at Tennessee Williams, you populate the stage with people, manufacture a world and characters that give breath to the metaphor. Also, theater lends itself to language more than film, and is very much about listening in real time.
MM: How did you find out about Leni and what most interested you about her?
GK: I’d gone to NYU grad film for a spell, and had directed a few films- so Leni was always on the radar in some way or another; the more I found out about her life and how she tried to varnish her work for Hitler, the more interested I got. Here was a woman making super innovative films, inventing new cinematic grammar that’s still studied in film schools today and influencing modern day filmmakers, at a time when hardly any women were directing. And yet, somehow, she navigated this regimented world of ‘uber-mensch’ to satisfy her ambitions and do so at a scale that no one could’ve imagined. Also, I was ensorcelled by her extravagant narcissism, and how I could use that for genuine humor. Her keen self-absorption allowed me to subvert her self-aggrandizement; vanity tripping and indicting her when least expected, like the perfect pratfall or unexpected Freudian slip.
MM: What most surprised you as you got into researching her life?
GK: For me it’s always about finding the proper metaphor to birth the world and the characters. Here it was an editing room in limbo. And how this filmmaker, Leni, could edit and re-edit her life and lies to present the proper, more palatable story of her life — a director’s cut so to speak. Here the metaphor becomes real and concrete as she physically handles and assembles the film to screen the latest versions for the audience.
MM: Was it tough to have to work within the parameters of history and an actual person rather than creating an entirely fictional character which you have complete control over?
GK: I believe it was Orson Welles who said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” Limitations are great, they do half the work for you if you’re irreverent, something I have no trouble being when I write. Irreverence tethered to imagination in the service of metaphor is a grand recipe for almost anything.
MM: How long did it take to write this play?
GK: The play has had many iterations and incarnations over several years, very much influenced by the wonderful team I’ve had the good fortune to work with: Jodie Markell as Leni, and Richard Caliban directing. The three of us have creatively forged this work from its genesis into what it is today, and I’m very supremely grateful for that; a rare case of perfect chemistry!
MM: What’s your favorite part of the play and why?
GK: There’s definitely one part that I love and is seminal to the living metaphor of the play, but I can’t give it away. Let me just tease further by saying that it’s insidious and makes the audience complicit in a very unexpected way. Unwittingly, the audience finds themselves aligned with Leni in some almost irresistible way. They are theater and yet they have transcended theater to become self-doubting entities. We have also tried to contemporize the play by feathering in certain current event elements, without getting too didactic or heavy handed. Overall, however, my favorite part of the play is the humor throughout. How the darkness of the play is activated by this humor that keeps it always fresh and alive. Part of that is the writing, the other part is Jodie Markell’s impeccable performance and timing, married to Richard Caliban’s direction. And live accordion and violin by Spiff Wiegand is the icing on the cake.
MM: What do you hope audiences take away from this show?
GK: Humor. Humility. And foreboding. Leni’s story of lying to oneself to satisfy your ambitions is not new, complicity through passivity — or in her case self-delusion — is not rare or uncommon. In fact, it’s rampant all around us. Look at government, law firms, universities, and all the people who justify their compromise with convenient narratives or by looking away. I think the show italicizes this behavior in historical context and offers a unique precedence that helps understand the present-day climate.
MM: What is some of the best feedback you’ve gotten about this piece thus far?
GK: The best feedback is sometimes also mixed. Praise is often easy to absorb, and criticism can be conveniently dismissed — but I recall in Edinburgh, at the Fringe, how one older gentleman loved the play but complained that he was manipulated into doing something (I won’t spoil it but tell you what) that was very disturbing to him. Somehow the play had gotten under his skin in unexpected ways, and that thrilled me. Aside from the drama of the piece, and beautiful way in which Jodie inhabits Leni’s psyche, there’s a praxis in the performance of this material that needs to be communally experienced.
MM: What other projects are you working on right now and/or what themes might you tackle in future works?
GK: I’ve got a play on Hitchcock using death as the ultimate escape metaphor that I recently finished. And a musical on Trump, where he’s got a Musk Neuralink chip implanted in his head that allows him to sing beautifully and grandiloquently, after the planet has already melted due to climate change, and he’s stuck on an ice flow with Melania. And a screenplay in early production called “Love and Swiping in the Age of Sorrow.”
MM: What are your ultimate goals for the future and is there anything else that you would like to mention?
GK: I’d like to thank the Paradise Factory for being bold enough to produce this play at this urgent juncture of history. Sadly, I think the play is singularly congruent, and vital, for the crazy times we are living in. I’d love to see it performed at regional theaters and in the UK, which might be tough given the tacit censorship already taking effect wherever we look.
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The play runs from May 26 to June 14 at New York’s Paradise Factory Theater. Tickets are $27, available at www.lenislastlament.com or paradisefactory.org.
Photos by Francis Krow
