Mennonites, Homosexuality & Adultery - Armin Wiebe's play

You wouldn't think the words Mennonites and sex would belong in the same sentence, let alone in the same play. In fact, Armin Wiebe's first play, The Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven Blatz combines them in an entertaining and comedic way.

The play is about a Mennonite couple in the 1930s who is trying to get pregnant and find an old, broken piano that fell off a wagon. Obrum finds the piano and brings it home. He wants his wife, Susch to learn how to play. Not only does he bring a piano but he also agrees to let Beethoven Blatz stay at their house with them to fix the piano and "teach Susch" to play. I put that in quotations because Blatz doesn't really want to teach Susch, he just wants to compose his own Sonata.

This is actually the first time in a play where I've actually seen a sex scene. It's weird, I know because we see sex in movies and on TV all the time. I think it has something to do with the fact that when you're far away, it's hard to create intimacy and would just end up looking overly sexual. Wiebe avoids this by adding a comedic spin to the sex scene in the play. The two characters aren't actually connecting with each other - they both have their own objectives, neither of which involves the other person.

The one thing I struggled with in the play was the complicity of Teen's relationship with Susch. That character left something to be desired for me. I almost felt like I do when I'm watching a film that's based on a novel. I felt like lot of her importance was left out because of time issues. I wanted more of a conclusion to that relationship and it just didn't really play out the way I had hoped.

I was disappointed that we didn't get the talk with the artists and the actors that we were promised at the end of the play. It would have been interesting to hear some insights from the actors on what they thought of the play when they first read it and how they shaped the characters they played.

I thought the discussion with Armin was very interesting, however it would have been nice if he had brought something he had prepared to speak to us about. 50 minutes is a long time to fill with questions. I think one of the biggest things that struck me was when he was talking about how you have to think about what will work on stage in a play. He mentioned writing that the characters would turn off the oil lamp but never actually when they would be turning it on. He also said there was a part where Obrum was eating a banana that he had to cut "because bananas on stage are just a nuissance." These are the kind of things you don't have to think about when writing a short story.