From Seed to F1 Draft looking for a Producer with Vision and Money
Premise:
A story set around the lives of the people that work at a popular ‘Dinner Theater’ named ‘Brandished’ that is currently performing Work This Out
There are Thirty-Eight People that work at the Dinner Theater with a 100 guest occupancy.
Garret Frolich von Ihering owns the Theater.
Garret inherited the Dinner Theater from his Mother and Father. He could construct a reality in which he co founded the Theater with his parents. He was one year old when his parents had opened the Original Dinner Theater, known then as The Lil Sadie Dinner Theater, in April 1970.
Often with a ‘Scripted’ routine about Li’l Abner and Sadie Hawkins and The Sadie Hawkins Day Race that ensues and ends in a Song and Dance routine. They had different scripts with varied incidents and use of supporting characters from the stories that had been popular. The motif was appealing for families and the theater drew a full house most of the time. The food was good and the show was always a little different with new characters and events each weekend.
During the week, each day held varied events that were not Lil Abner and Sadie scripts. Over the years there would be a variety of genre and featured productions that were often sensual and arousing, comical and politically charged rhetoric that mirrored the current times.
It’s been 7 years now since Garret lost his Mother. His Father had died just the year before and it was no sudden shock when she passed. It actually surprised him that she had held out so long; with the COVID Pandemic and her age. His Father and Mother had developed a relationship at levels not identified on the PLS Chart; the Passionate Love Scale. Most couples like that pass together or shortly one after the other.
It wasn’t a co-dependency that had been the psychological tendons of the bond between the two. She was strong like muscle and he was firm like bone. They worked together and it didn’t need to be called love or anything else. The ‘relationship’ was theirs, they owned it, and they valued and appreciated each other; adding even more value together than apart from the other.
They had both been young children that escaped Nazi Germany in April of 1933 and had been thrust together through the event that led them to relocate, him to Switzerland and her to Brazil, for 7 years before finding their way to meet for their later education as young children when Ida III migrated to Switzerland in 1940.
Their parents didn’t consider themselves Jewish just European and fleeing the senseless warring and back-biting that had become part of the culture. A Jew only dressed and acted differently, less threatening, than the other creatures who feigned they were from a superior chosen race. Superior to every other different creature, hand-crafted and placed on the planet.
In 1946. After the war, amongst Nations, had subsided by consolidating focus elsewhere, and passage back to Germany was safe, they decided to settle back in Giessen, Germany. The people there were busy rebuilding after suffering heavy bombing in 1944. Both found work at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen. He became a Faculty Member teaching a class within the History Department and she found a position as an assistant to the Dean of the English Department; also substituting in place of Faculty as needed.
In the Spring of 1947, the couple had made friends with the owner of a local bakery they frequented. At least once a week the two couples would meet for dinner. The German couple spoke some broken English and found conversing with Ida and Herbert helped them to develop a more fluent spoken English wording. In time many of their friends had noticed they were speaking better English. This led to the German couple asking that other couples be allowed to attend their routine weekly Dinners.
Eventually it became a rotating event, held at a different home each week. They became very popular, some homes would accommodate six to eight couples and the dinners became more frequent with demand from the community swelling to require three to four ‘Dinner Sessions’ a week. This didn’t bother Ida and Herbert in the least. They ate well every night and had gained endeared friends for life, as we will see as their story unfolds. These very friends will travel to England to visit them many times after they move in 1969.
For the next twenty-four years they taught locals English, served the students and supported the efforts of the Universitat; while also becoming well known with the Student Population on campus through involvement with the establishment of the first Performing Arts Department on the campus in 1957, and in 1958 within the Greater Community through their involvement in developing, and acting, in the English speaking ‘Performances’, at The Keller Theatre in the late 1950’s and throughout the 60’s.
The Keller Theatre:
Founded in 1958, the Keller Theatre is the oldest English-language theatre in Germany. It was run by the American forces as part of their entertainment branch.
It was always open to anyone who wanted to participate in community theatre, the “Keller family”, regardless of their nationality or language background.
The name originates from the first space used — the basement (Keller) of the Miller Hall in Giessen. In 1994, the performance venue changed to Rödgener Strasse 64.
In 2007, when the US base was closed, the theatre passed into the hands of the friends of the Keller Theatre e.V. We continued the good work without a break, using facilities in various parts of the town.
Our “home” is now the Kleine Bühne, where most of our shows are staged.
Students and Notable People during the time at the Universitat:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Mazar
Possible Muse or Inspiration for Plays and Productions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_B%C3%BCchner
(POI) Points Of Interest In Giessen:
Akademischer Forstgarten Gießen
Botanischer Garten Gießen, the university’s historic botanical garden
University Hospital of Giessen and Marburg
‘Twin City’ Reference for our story:
History of Twin Cities Designation.
Twinning Cities became popular in Great Britain after the Second World War, with the aim that building links and exchanges between individual towns and cities would bring reconciliation and prosperity after years of conflict
Winchester, United Kingdom (since 1962)
Both of Garret’s parents were outgoing and friendly. They shared the warmest seat in every room they sat in. The 1960’s in Giessen were like many war torn towns and cities across the civilized planet; in that they were revitalized by a sense of change of seasons and recent rebuilding. Fear of war, in the region, had subsided and the myriad of deployed soldiers had become part of the locale they were deployed to. No longer distracted with the arts of war and now finding discretionary time to entertain themselves and the native civilian population.
Americanizing, Europe and abroad was becoming the only common business, with the jews gone or disbanded, supposedly.
While the powers that be, behind the veil, were happy and content with the results of the prior 40 years and now moved on to consolidate efforts towards a Korean Conflict, and making its way into Vietnam. Trade across allied nations was making new headways. Some were getting rich from the production, transportation and selling of goods and developing the new technologies that would lead to new discoveries. This season after war was becoming the forerunner to an era of Don Draper and a new style of Mad Men.
In 1946. Garret’s parents had moved into a small apartment, on campus, the Universitat provided as part of their compensation. It was meant to be a way they could transition more comfortably into the still war ravaged environment at the time. They would have plenty of time to find more permanent housing with many new houses being built to choose from with a little patience. They may even buy land and build a home they can sell.
Garret’s Mother was Ida Christina Frölich-Ihering, a Third Generation namesake for her great, great grandmother, Ida Christina Frölich, who was married to Caspar Rudolph Ritter von Jhering. A prominent Jurist who is best known for his 1872 book Der Kampf ums Recht (The Struggle for Law), as a legal scholar, and as the founder of a modern sociological and historical school of law.
It was all a secret and null of any prominence. Ida Christina Frölich I had been branded with the name and then carted off to secrecy from anyone that would consider her and her offspring part of the family. Ida Christina Frölich had died, barely 40, in 1867 during a failed birthing.
Hermann Friedrich Albert von Ihering was born in 1850 in Kiel, Germany, the oldest son of Rudolf von Jhering, and had many children of his own. Many still may be unaccounted for. In 1880 he had a child named Ida with a woman he had a sorted affair with the same year he married Anna Maria Clara Bezel-Wolff. Publically it was assumed that Ida I, had been born to Hermann and Anna; without any correction from Meta, the birth Mother. Then at age two, Ida died, according to Hermann and Anna, of unknown symptoms.
At the time, only three people knew what really happened to Ida; simply to avoid potential shame and ridicule as a bastard child from a tree of pious and contemptible people. Hermann was baffled when not even Anna, a widow with an orphan son, was shunned and deemed unworthy.
Hermann realized what ‘Sins of The Father’ meant, now through true ‘divine’ intervention. As a means to mitigate the concern he blessed his child with separation from the clan that would connect her to her namesake.
Ida Christina Frölich I had one child, a girl, who she named Ida Christina Frölich II. In honor of her Fathers Mother she would never know. Ida I was 18 years old when the 28 year old Sebastian Wolff impregnated her. Her step-brother. In time she would realize this truth, and confront it, eventually.
Ida I had been taken by her Mother, Meta Buff, to live in a remote village not far from Giessen. Hermann had made arrangements and supplied a stipend to supplement their living expenses. While he went to Rio De Janeiro with his recently acquired wife. The widow, Anna Maria Clara Wolff (born von Bezel) and now brandished with a new name, Anna Maria Clara Bezel-Wolff-Ihering. Accompanied by her then 10-year-old son, Sebastian Wolff, to stake out a new life in Brazil.
In 1883, Hermann was nominated a traveling naturalist of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro and lived in several cities by the Lagoa dos Patos. He eventually bought an island at the delta of the Camaquã River, which started to be called Ilha do Doutor (Doctor’s Island) and lived there for some years, with Anna and the kids living in Rio de Janeiro. He was naturalized Brazilian in 1885.
Hermann returned from Brazil alone in 1892 to attend his Father’s funeral in Göttingen. He visited Meta and Ida also at this time. Spending a month in Europe while Anna stayed in Rio de Janeiro with his other kids. Anna was already accustomed to his frequent absences. Hermann would actually return to São Paulo and spend time on Doctor Island before visiting Anna and the kids, 3 months later.
In 1898 Hermann returned again to Geissen, bringing Sebastain, and again without Anna, who was with Rodolpho, Clara and Wilhelm and now in São Paulo. Hermann and Sebastian made the long trek back to Geiseen to spend just a few days for a visit to see Meta Buff and Ida. It is this time that Sebastain and Ida are left alone for 3 days. While Hermann and Meta travel to a nearby Bed & Breakfast for their own purpose of having a moment of private time to make love and ‘frolic’ together without any care for others opinions.
In 1901, Hermann and Annas’ son, Rodolpho, was sent to Europe to study in Heidelberg. However, their other son, Wilhelm, died soon after of enteritis, only 16 years old. Anna became too shaken by the event and died later the same year. Rodolpho then abandoned his studies in Europe and returned to Brazil to help his father collect specimens and artifacts from the region.
In 1907 Hermann returned to Geissen to collect Meta Buff, Ida I, and her nine year old child, Ida Christina Frölich II. He fetched them and immediately returned to Brazil. Taking Meta and Ida and little Ida to São Paulo to live with him, with Anna now gone and the other kids grown and gone. They visited the Island, where Herman and a local farmer had established a lucrative ‘Nudibranch’ harvesting operation and spent time in Santa Catarina with Hermann as he worked with the museum to acquire specimens and artifacts of notable value.
In 1920 The Iherings’ returned to Europe, nomadly living, first in Naples, before returning to Germany. In 1921, he settled with Meta in Büdingen until Meta died in 1928. Hermann, Ida I and Ida II moved to Geissen where Hermann died shortly after in 1930.
Hermann and Metas’ daughter Ida I, now 48 years old, and the now 30 year old daughter Ida Christina Frölich II, now with a new baby girl, lived together in Giessen until 1933.
Ida Christina Frölich I had named her daughter Ida Christina Frölich II as a matter of continuation of something she really didn’t understand fully. Why her Father had done what he did hadn’t made sense to her. She never made a fuss about it or asked to be revealed to her Father’s paternal family. She was accustomed to their life spent abroad, away from the messy affair. Being on the same continent now would make no difference, just like when she was younger and had no knowledge of her Father.
Ida Christina Frölich II was born in 1930, just after the death of her Grandfather Hermann and was 3 years old when her Mother and Grandmother left Geissen to avoid the brewing war between forming Nationalist German Factions and the settled Jewish Merchants; that had been lit kindling already through generations of social needling.
April 1st, 1933 was the signal to the Elder Ida to leave the community they had been living in just outside of Geissen. It had been 12 years now since they had moved back from Brazil and just a few years since Hermann had passed. Both Idas’ had witnessed the rapid changes as if merely spectators from Brazil. With little cause to venture outside the small village community they lived in not far from Geissen.
Hermann had insisted, pleading, as he lay dying, that they not leave Europe unless they had to. He wanted them to stay near Giessen and establish roots there. He knew the wages of war and had hoped being outside of Giessen would allow them to stay out of the affair as it passed.
In 1885, Hermann had bought a small island at the delta of the Camaquã River, he had named Doctor’s Island. He had spent some time collecting species samples near the Lagoa dos Patos engaged as a Naturalist by the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro.
Hermann had left the property to Ida I and Ida II, not knowing Ida III would materialize. He had two small houses built and a barn with a stable.
Hermann made a pact with a local man he had befriended and partnered with Specimen Collecting and left the island in his care when he left to attend his Father’s funeral in 1892. He returned to the island for a brief couple of months before moving on to São Paulo in 1893. He returned in 1895 for an extended stay on the Island before returning to live with Anna in Rio de Janeiro in 1900. After a last visit with Meta and Ida in 1919, he never returned to the Island before he died in 1930.
Ida Christina Frölich III would learn to talk on this island. Experiencing the same atmospheres her Mother did as a child. She’ll be 10 years old when she meets Herbert Ihering Jr.
Background:
Herbert Ihering (also sometimes Herbert Jhering: 29 February 1888–15 January 1977)
It’s not privy information to the general public that Herbert Ihering is the son of Hermann von Ihering. This is a scandalous issue and will draw attention to this book when published. Exposing this may be a libelous affair. Do your due diligence.
Herbert Ihering Sr. never married and only had one very brief affair with a woman who had portrayed herself as a man when he met her. The encounter produced a child in 1928. The child’s Mother named him, as she did, to be his Father’s namesake, as a pointed matter of spite towards his Father. Herbert had denied the child and shunned her requests for help in birthing and raising the baby; ashamed of the whole affair.
Herbert (Jr) grew up without knowledge of who his Father was or even that he was a Jr. or namesake. He was 5 years old when his Mother and Grandfather had taken him to Switzerland in April of 1933. Avoiding the culture change occurring and violent criticism of their Jewish ancestry. They weren’t especially jewish, just Multi-Ethnic European and not aryan.
Herbert Ihering (Jr) would meet Ida Christina Frölich III in 7 years and marry her in fourteen. Her name would become Ida Christina Frölich-Ihering.
Was this Hermann’s plan all along? How could that be?
Who will Garret’s offspring be? His wife Amelia is pregnant, expecting twins. The year is 2027.
‘Brandished’ has just opened for a season with a new production.
WIP
More Keller Theatre History:
When the US military left Giessen, Hesse, in 2007, they did not leave us any documentation on the
Keller Theatre. We have pieced the history together as best we can with the help of our own
members, including Peter Merck (d. 2022), a German who taught English at a high school in Wetzlar
and joined the group in 1964, and Die Brücke (“The Bridge”), the German-American Club in Giessen,
who often saw Keller Theatre shows.
1958–1969
A small group of actors got together in 1958 to put on Heaven Can Wait, presumably the play by
Harry Segall. They belonged to the US military stationed in Giessen, Hesse. This was the beginning of
the Army Entertainment Program in Giessen. No one knows how many performances there were or
how big or who the audiences were, nor do we know the exact month of the production. In April
1958 Brad Arrington was appointed Entertainment Director for the Giessen Military Community in
Giessen. The Volkshalle (People’s Hall) in Giessen had been taken over by the Americans and
renamed the Miller Hall. The basement skittle alley was converted into a small theatre. Discarded
cinema seats were rescued from an automobile scrapyard and arranged on three sides round a stage.
A ticket booth was installed, even though shows were free of charge at the beginning.
The name: “Keller” is German for “cellar”, and for some unknown reason, the British spelling
“Theatre” was adopted.
Heaven Can Wait by Harry Segal
The adapted Movie version of the original story. Joe Pendleton (Warren Beatty), quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams, is killed in an auto accident. In the afterlife, Joe discovers that his guardian angel (Buck Henry) has taken him from his body prematurely, and he is due many more years on earth. Unable to return to his body, Joe assumes the form of greedy multimillionaire industrialist Leo Farnsworth. As Farnsworth, Joe attempts a return to football and falls in love with environmental activist Betty Logan.
Further Entertainment Directors in this period were:
Jay South 1960–1962
Theodore Jones 1962–1963
Thomas Soare 1963–1964
Virgil Godfrey 1965–1970
Further performances in this period:
1960–1962, five Keller productions plus four guest shows
1964, The Boy Friend, musical by Sandy Wilson, guest show: Rhein-Main Players
The Boy Friend (sometimes misrepresented The Boyfriend) is a musical by Sandy Wilson. Its original 1954 London production ran for 2,078 performances, briefly making it the third-longest running musical in West End or Broadway history (after Chu Chin Chow and Oklahoma!) until they were all surpassed by Salad Days. The Boy Friend marked Julie Andrews’ American stage debut.
Set in the carefree world of the French Riviera in the Roaring Twenties, The Boy Friend is a comic pastiche of 1920s shows, in particular early Rodgers and Hart musicals such as The Girl Friend. Its relatively small cast and low cost of production makes it a continuing popular choice for amateur and student groups.
Sandy Wilson wrote a sequel to The Boy Friend. Set ten years later, and, appropriately, a pastiche of 1930s musicals, in particular those of Cole Porter, it was titled Divorce Me, Darling! and ran for 91 performances at London’s old Globe Theatre in 1965. It is sometimes revived as a “double bill” with The Boy Friend.
The original score and manuscripts for the script and lyrics can be found in Wilson’s archive at the Harry Ransom Center.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Friend_(musical)
Overture — The Boy Friend (Original Broadway Cast 1954)
STAFF PICK: “The Boy Friend” from Goodspeed’s 2005 production of Sandy Wilson’s THE BOY FRIEND
1964: 11, 12, 13, 14 November, Five Finger Exercise by Peter Shaffer
Five Finger Exercise is a 1962 American drama film made by Columbia Pictures, directed by Daniel Mann and produced by Frederick Brisson from a screenplay by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, based on the play by Peter Shaffer. It follows a few days in the lives of the Harringtons, who are at war. While the husband and wife fight each other, the son and daughter are on the same path. Then, when a music teacher comes in, things begin to change for the better, until other things start to threaten the peace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Finger_Exercise
The Five Finger Exercise — Peter Shaffer — Lux Radio Theatre — South Africa
1965, Zoo Story by Edward Albee
The Zoo Story is a one-act play by American playwright Edward Albee. His first play, it was written in 1958 and completed in just three weeks.[1] The play explores themes of isolation, loneliness, miscommunication as anathematization, social disparity and dehumanization in a materialistic world. Today, professional theatre companies can produce The Zoo Story either as a part of Edward Albee’s at Home at the Zoo (originally titled Peter and Jerry), or as a standalone play. Its prequel, Homelife, written in 2007, however, can only be produced as a part of Edward Albee’s at Home at the Zoo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zoo_Story
1967, Seven for Sandburg (poems)
1968, Hostile Witness by Jack Roffey
Hostile Witness is a 1968 British courtroom drama film based on a play by Jack Roffey, directed by Ray Milland (who had appeared in the play on Broadway) and starring Milland, Sylvia Syms, Raymond Huntley and Julian Holloway.
Hostile Witness by Jack Roffey
1968, March 22, 23, The Ghost Train by Arnold Ridley, guest performances by “The Eleven” from Wetzlar,
directed by Peter Merck
The Ghost Train is a stage comedy-thriller, written in 1923 by the English actor and playwright Arnold Ridley. The story centres upon the social interaction of a group of railway passengers who have been stranded at a remote rural station overnight, and are increasingly threatened by a latent external force, with a denouement ending.
Claude Hulbert & Arnold Ridley — The Ghost Train play (1951)
1969, Village Wooing by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Peter & Margit Merck
Village Wooing, A Comedietta for Two Voices is a play by George Bernard Shaw, written in 1933 and first performed in 1934. It has only two characters, hence the subtitle “a comedietta for two voices”. The first scene takes place aboard a liner, the second in a village shop. The characters are known only as “A” and “Z”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_Wooing
Village Wooing: A Comedietta for two voices
1969, Out of the Flying Pan, by David Campton, directed by Jay South
A play on words, this gibberish spoken one act written by David Campton is transformed into an intriguing short film by Jack S. Kimball. Two diplomat’s come together to form a treaty between two nations. The business of government being nation building, trying to obtain more land, wealth and resources, each diplomat is responsible for getting the most out of their agreement. When each side resorts to trickery and underhandedness, the government official’s find they are plunged into war, destroying more than they knew they were bargaining for.
Out Of The Flying Pan FESTE 1982
Briefing Notes:
There’s more to suss out in the story of Garet’s Mother and Father. Their parents and extended family have more to offer the script.
We need people with broad knowledge of the era, on earth, between 1860 and 1960 to rudder the storyline and season salt and pepper where we can.
The Keller Theatre offers much to build out for profiling the era, people and ‘political messaging’ through the plays and stories surrounding the activities of our characters during that time in their life.
Story breaks back to 2020
The Dinner Theatre was closed for a season when Garrets’ Father became ill the year he died in 2019. Prior to this event, Garret was a protege under both his Father and Mother, acting on their behalf in most matters regarding the operation of the establishment. The Lil Sadie Dinner Theatre had been rebranded simply ‘The Dinner Theater’ in 1999. Reopening with a new production and branding scheme.
Business had declined and the fun and thrill of the Lil Abner and Sadie routines had faded. Still, they had had a good run with the branding and people produced content. The universal thrill lust of men and women chasing after love and the excitement of a village celebrating happiness with great joy, had come through to deliver a family friendly dinner venue for 30 years.
Garret Frolich von Ihering was born in April of 1969, not long after Ida III and Herbert arrived in Winchester.
In 1962, Giessen had become a less important location, strategically, for the United States Military to maintain troops in. Since the war in Europe had subsided, turning to a ‘Cold War’ in some sense of a ‘beasts’ nature. The USAG ‘folded up tent’, so to speak, and moved out of the region. A ceremony had been held to commemorate the event and honors were bestowed in many ways to the town of Giessen and its citizens as an act of goodwill and charity. Ida and Herbert had attended the event and both had become interested in Winchester after the announcement it would be a ‘Twin City’. A long held tradition in many cultures that have shared interests; even if those interests were newly formed and ambiguous.
United Kingdom Winchester, United Kingdom
Winchester is a cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government district, at the western end of the South Downs National Park, on the River Itchen. It is 60 miles (97 km) south-west of London and 14 miles (23 km) from Southampton, its nearest city. At the 2011 census, Winchester had a population of 45,184. The wider City of Winchester district, which includes towns such as Alresford and Bishop’s Waltham, has a population of 116,595.[2] Winchester is the county town of Hampshire and contains the head offices of Hampshire County Council.
Ida and Herbert had many conversations, over the course of the next five years, regarding visiting Winchester ‘someday’. They had moved from Switzerland to Giessen after the war because it was their birthplace, not because it was their home.
On New Year’s Eve/Day at midnight, as 1967 transitioned into 1968, within that ‘second’ of time that existed, the conversation, in the form of debate, had come to its end. They decided with a kiss at the stroke of midnight, they would move to Winchester the next year.
At the turn of the year, The Keller Theatre is preparing for the first new show of the new year.
1968, Hostile Witness by Jack Roffey
Hostile Witness is a 1968 British courtroom drama film based on a play by Jack Roffey, directed by Ray Milland (who had appeared in the play on Broadway) and starring Milland, Sylvia Syms, Raymond Huntley and Julian Holloway.
Hostile Witness by Jack Roffey
The first Saturday of each month at The Keller Theatre was a whirlwind of activity. All day long bustling with humans preparing for the Staged Production to aire that evening. A group of seven United States Servicemen, the Iherings’ and many of the friends they had made within the local community brought these Staged Productions to life through stagecraft, set building and creating costumes for the actors and story crafters to use. Every performance was ‘sold out’ in the sense that there wasn’t even, free, standing room left within the small venue.
In the fall of 1957, Ida and Herbert had been approached at the school by a member of the Chancellor’s Office. A request had been made, by a USAG Serviceman, to the Chancellor’s Office at the Universitat, seeking help with research for a script he was writing. He had wanted to know about a town that had been destroyed in the war. His Father had fought and died there in a Military Action during WWI. [More of this story will suss out through the staged production of the script we’ll see eventually.]
Ida and Herbert spoke wonderful English, in addition to German and Romansh, and had been busy lately with setting up a new, meagerly funded, Performing Arts Department, eventually a place on campus known as the ‘PAD’, for the Students on Campus.
The Chancellor’s Office directed the inquiring Serviceman to Herbert for help from the History Department. For weeks the Serviceman would come and Herbert would spend hours with him working on constructing the script and providing details from his own developed knowledge and access to books and other scholars they could reach out to for reference and understanding to feed into the script.
Ida would hear about the sessions, as the story had infected them both; producing fodder for banter on a daily basis now. They enjoyed all the aspects of writing and performing with a small group of people who enjoyed sharing the same experience and time spent. The lifestyle they had settled into suited them and Herbert began thinking, eventually in the mid 1960’s, about an idea for a Dinner Theatre.
The seasons came and went with 2–3 productions and 12–15 performances each year to salt and pepper Ida and Herbert’s life while working at the Universitat. The couple had taken on leading the creation of a Performing Arts Department at the Universitat when a ban against it was removed from the schools bylaws and mission statement. The Department would fail to retain funding in the budget and be removed from curriculum offering in 1970 after Ida and Herbert leave in 1969.
The weekly dinners with friends that had started in 1947 still carried on even after everyone spoke fluent English. After 1958, though, the dinners became blended functions with most guests also involved in the Performing Arts Department productions at the school or The Keller Theatre.
[I envision a fast moving sequence of scenes that depict the passing of time through these dinner settings.]
New Year’s Day 1968 was bitter sweet with news of the New Year’s Day Battle in Vietnam. The media had been reporting, In late 1967, that Pope Paul VI had declared 1 January 1968 a day of peace and persuaded the South Vietnamese and the Americans to observe a truce. It worked for the better part of the day. The story is uncertain and details reported might be inaccurate. Somehow a skirmish sparked an early end to the temporary ‘peace’ accord.
With war raging elsewhere on the planet now, life in Giessen was a nice blend of American influence with old way traditions being updated by the youthful influence of the Student Body at the Universitat.
Ida and Herbert had decided to move to Winchester and begin immediately planning. Herbert had begun thinking about what they would do when they got there and how they would transition to find work and settle in. They were ready for a new sense of adventure. Moving to Giessen in 1947 had been a similar feeling. Now they found they could light that candle again moving to England.
Ida contacted the Ministry for Foreign Affairs & Immigration for more information regarding laws, proper protocols and inquired into benefits available for people immigrating to a Twin City in England. Herbert had suggested they might find positions at King Alfred’s College.
They had been saving their income and had accrued a sizable sum that gave them a fair bit of confidence in moving to another Continent. Herbert began considering an idea that occurred to him to open a DInner Theatre as a business venture for income. It would be a bit disheartening to them both when they realize the conversion of their assets, accumulated in Germany for 23 years, had been depreciated by the economic market values operating in England.
Four years prior in 1966, Herbert had run across the Lil Abner Comics the idea for the Sadie Hawkins Day Dance had sprung from. Making its debut in America in the 1940’s; the Sadie Hawkins Day Race became revived through the popularity of the 1959 Broadway Musical and the rerelease of the RKO movie made in 1940.
Herbert and Ida had developed a production script from the comic book he had acquired from a US Serviceman. It was performed by the Performing Arts Department with the Students at the Universitat portraying the village size cast of characters. It was a grand scale production that was a hit with the Community.
Crafting and performing Lil Abner and Sadie Hawkins Day skit scripts became a regular feature of the Students in the PA program the last few years the Department existed at the Universitat in Giessen.
The Lil Abner and Sadie scripts created during the last few years that Ida and Herbert lived in Giessen would prove to be most valuable in England. Where awareness of the Musical Production of Al Capps original story was well known.
Al Capp was a popular figure in the public politics of love for life and the nature of living with the results brought about by prophets of war. Prophets that promoted war to fight for righteousness that is imputed by God to those that heard the call. Was all this some vengeance that stemmed back to The Canaanites history with the Jews? Or was the underlying motivation for war, the root of the action, the love of money to live more abundantly for those that heard the call? The dinner bells of war.
Herbert and Ida read the Time Magazine publication that became available each week through the Universitat Library. In Giessen at this time, Time published weekly, on time, in America, but delivered a week late to Germany, allowing for shipping and handling across the oceans. It might be true that a month’s worth of magazines came each month, a month late.
Al Capp Info:
Capp was born in New Haven, Connecticut, of East European Jewish heritage. He was the eldest child of Otto Philip Caplin (1885–1964)[3] and Matilda (Davidson) Caplin (1884–1948).[4] His brothers, Elliot and Jerome, were cartoonists, and his sister, Madeline, was a publicist. Capp’s parents were both natives of Latvia whose families had migrated to New Haven in the 1880s. “My mother and father had been brought to this country from Russia when they were infants”, wrote Capp in 1978. “Their fathers had found that the great promise of America was true — it was no crime to be a Jew.” The Caplins were dirt-poor, and Capp later recalled stories of his mother going out in the night to sift through ash barrels for reusable bits of coal.
In August 1919, at the age of nine, Capp was run down by a trolley car and had his left leg amputated above the knee.[5] According to his father Otto’s unpublished autobiography, young Capp was not prepared for the amputation beforehand; having been in a coma for days, he suddenly awoke to discover that his leg had been removed.[6] He was eventually given a prosthetic leg, but only learned to use it by adopting a slow way of walking which became increasingly painful as he grew older.[7] The childhood tragedy of losing a leg likely helped shape Capp’s cynical worldview, which was darker and more sardonic than that of the average newspaper cartoonist.[8] “I was indignant as hell about that leg”, he revealed in a November 1950 interview in Time magazine.
“The secret of how to live without resentment or embarrassment in a world in which I was different from everyone else”, Capp philosophically wrote (in Life magazine on May 23, 1960), “was to be indifferent to that difference.”[9] The prevailing opinion among his friends was that Capp’s Swiftian satire was, to some degree, a creatively channeled, compensatory response to his disability.
Growing up in a world at war had left Herbert and Ida perfectly cleaving to one another and finding more than refuge in each other. Structured learning and living simply, as young children, in meager, but reasonably hospitable circumstances, had worked discipline and developed some underlying self-control that could be harnessed between them together.
Herbert and Ida were both indifferent to the chaos that seemed to be all around them just outside the protection of their ‘wonder twins’ like bubble. Relative theories of humor and dramatic interpretations of atrocity made sense to both of them. Reading Time Magazine each week became their primary source for abstract perspective on current events and prompted thoughts that fed into their joint writing projects and informed conversations with friends over shared dinner times.
The state of Hebert and Ida’s union in 1958 was the likes of molting animals pairing, producing new selfs and spiritual offspring. There weren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done and they didn’t care. They shed the old feathers, from the flight of each day, each night before sleep. Each night their talons would evolve and new feathers would grow to fly through the next day.
Time Magazine pubs related to Switzerland prior to 1969*
SWITZERLAND: Neutrality Is Not Indifference
The time Ida and Herbert spent in Switzerland was enchanted. They had met through the public lower secondary education system in Switzerland in a twist of fate that placed Ida in one of Herbert’s classes. Ida is two years younger than Herbert but a mistake caused her to be scheduled into his Art Class.
Ida didn’t look or even act her age and the mistake went unnoticed for some time. She enjoyed the class and interacting with the older children, especially Herbert. It might have been called ‘Love at first sight”. They hadn’t learned to label the feelings they found they had for time spent with each other. It was like they discovered something that didn’t exist apart from when they were together.
It wasn’t a week before young Herbert was walking Ida home and spent time with her family, staying for dinner the second time he walked here home. Their relationship wasn’t hard or easy, it just formed without impedance. There was something mystical about them, together.
Herbert was 14 years old before he decided to kiss Ida. Neither were overly affectionate by nature. Being together, in the same room, in the same space, was the nectar to them. But nature does call and both hit puberty together.
When he was 16, and she had just turned 15, there was a moment they couldn’t control themselves that never burnt out, only formed a balance of control on the level of the way a nuclear reactor operates. They would endure, creatively, until they were married to have the kind of sex that produced babies.
The nature of the upbringing each of them had experienced by virtue of the simple and private lives their parents led had crafted a sense of individuality apart from the rest of the world. Both had this feature and it was the reason they meshed well together on a perpetual basis.
In 1946, Ida III was 16 years old. Herbert 18.
Herbert had spent 13 years in Switzerland and didn’t know just how ‘lucky’ or ‘blessed’ he had been to have migrated when he was just five years old with his Mother and her Father. His Grandfather had decided the war was coming to Giessen and had moved the family to Switzerland in April 1933. At the very same time, Ida III’s family had also decided to move themselves to Brazil for the same reasons. They would stay in Brazil on Doctor’s Island for seven years before moving to Switzerland for Ida III’s education. Ida III is ten years old when she leaves the Island to be integrated with civilization she hadn’t experienced since she was three years old.
Life on the Island was surreal for Ida III’s child-like needs and desires. She fell in love with the variety of NudiBranchs her deceased Great-Grandfather had harvested and sold when he lived there. He had been fascinated with them as well.
Life on the island was a peasant-like existence except free of the effects of too many other people living nearby. A simple Cottage and a Barn with Stable was what Ida I’s Father had left for them. A local Farmer named João who had worked with Hermann harvesting nudibranchs with his Father as a boy, introduced himself soon after their arrival, and kept up with the island’s occupants and tended to their needs routinely as if it was his duty or job. He had become smitten with the now 53 year old Ida I at first sight of her. Ida I, didn’t mind and enjoyed the attention, often flirting with the old man João while he fixed this and that around the island.
João may have been an angel. All three Ida’s valued and appreciated his kindness and generosity. The obvious nature of his attraction and an appreciation for their existence that seemed to ring through. He remembered Hermann in this element and the stories he told about his Ida and other kids, which he shared with all the Ida’s over campfires and dinners.
In time, Ida I became smitten as well and João and her took to each other as lovers. João would accompany The girls to Switzerland in 1940.
The END for now…
Chronological Timeline: (print and scribble version)
Glossary
Ida Christina Frölich-Ihering
Garret Frolich von Ihering
Hermann von Ihering
