The Enduring Legacy of BENT: An Evening with playwright Martin Sherman

Join us at Books on the Rise for an evening with legendary playwright Martin Sherman to discuss his timeless classic play BENT

About BENT:

In 1934 Berlin on the eve of the Nazi incursion, Max, a grifter, and his lover, Rudy, are recovering from a night of debauchery with a SA trooper. Two soldiers burst into the apartment and slit their guest’s throat, beginning a nightmare odyssey through Nazi Germany. Ranked lower on the human scale than Jews, the men, as avowed homosexuals, flee. Desperate and on the run, Max asks his own “discreetly” homosexual Uncle Freddie for help as the older man offers little more than suggestions on how to live, as he does, practicing homosexuality on the side. Attempting their escape, Rudy is beaten to death as Horst, another homosexual prisoner, warns Max to deny his lover. Taken to a death camp at Dachau, Max and Horst, branded with the “pink triangle,” hope to survive with each other for comfort and courage, but it is not to be.

About Martin Sherman:

Martin Sherman was born in Philadelphia, educated at Boston University and now lives in London. His early plays include Passing By, Cracks and Rio Grande, all originally presented by Playwrights Horizons in New York. Bent premiered at the Royal Court in 1979, transferred to the Criterion Theatre and was then presented on Broadway, where it received a Tony nomination for Best Play and won the Dramatist Guild's Hull-Warriner Award. Bent has been produced in over forty-five countries, and has been turned into a ballet in Brazil, and, in 1989, was revived at the National Theatre. It has been voted one of the NT2000 One Hundred Plays of the Century. His next plays were Messiah (Hampstead and Aldwych Theatres, 1983), When She Danced (King's Head, 1988; Gielgud, 1991), A Madhouse in Goa (Lyric Hammersmith and Apollo, 1989), Some Sunny Day (Hampstead, 1996) and Rose (National Theatre, 1999). Rose received an Olivier nomination for Best Play and transferred to Broadway the following season. Sherman has written an adaptation of E. M. Forster's A Passage to India for Shared Experience (Riverside Studios, 2002; Lyric Hammersmith, 2004) and a new version of a Luigi Pirandello play, Absolutely! (Perhaps) (Wyndhams, 2003) He has also written the book for the musical The Boy From Oz which opened on Broadway in 2003. His screenplays include The Clothes in the Wardrobe (US title: The Summer House), Alive and Kicking, Bent, Callas Forever and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. Martin Sherman Plays: One was published by Methuen Drama in 2004.

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