Why write a musical play about Thea von Harbou?

I hear you ask.

Let us answer in reverse order: First, why Thea von Harbou? Second, why a play about her? Third, why a musical play.

First, Thea von Harbou was an extraordinary woman whose life and achievements are not well known today, particularly outside of Germany.

Why are her achievements not so well known today? Because between 1933 and 1945, she worked in the German film industry while the Nazis were in power, and in 1940 or 41, she did what she felt she had to do and joined the Nazi party. As a result, film historians for the last fifty years or so have largely dismissed her work wrongly as Nazi propaganda. Today, many of her films from that period have become accessible via YouTube and other sources, and we can see for ourselves that accusation is completely false.

Second, her life story begs to be a play because it follows a Shakespearean arc.

She was married to actor Rudolph Klein-Rogge (if you know Metropolis, he’s “Rotwang,” the mad scientist) when she met director Fritz Lang in 1919. They began a personal and professional affair which resulted in some great silent films—and the suicide of Lang’s first wife. They then married, but their personal relationship quickly tanked because of Lang’s multiple infidelities.

Then, just as the Nazis came to power, she met the real love of her life: a grad student from India, seventeen years her junior. Then, Lang divorced her for being unfaithful to him—talk about your dramatic irony! She and the Indian married, but the Nazis frowned on miscegenation, so to protect him, she was forced to end the relationship in 1938 and send him back to India for his own protection. And all this time, she somehow continued to pursue her career as a screenwriter working within the strictures of Nazi censorship.

After the war, she was interned in a British camp, where she was thoroughly “de-Nazified,” but even then, she was barred from working in the resurrected German film industry, so in her late fifties, she volunteered to become one of the Trümmerfrauen, the women who helped to clean up the war rubble in the German cities. The bare-handed stoop labor accelerated the decline of her health, but she did the work, anyway. Talk about a survivor!

In the last yeas of her life, she was allowed return to the film industry that she helped to create and was finally about to receive a small portion of the recognition that she had earned when a tragic accident ended her life at the age of sixty-five.

It’s a story that begs for the immediacy and the reality of live theatre.

A story that covers such a time period can only be told effectively on stage, and the role of Thea von Harbou offers tremendous potential for actors of great talent and emotional range who seek a part commensurate with their ability.

Third, why a musical?

That’s easy. It’s a story about passion and loss and surviving and pursuing dreams against impossible odds—all the themes of the great musical plays. Only a musical play can communicate these kinds of emotions fully and unreservedly.

That’s why a musical play about Thea von Harbou.