A family in 1933 Germany wrestles with their values in Year One

At the beginning of Chicago writer Erik Gernand’s drama Year One, small-town doctor Anna delivers a monologue about helping a patient with appendicitis onto the table. The man asks her, “Are you one of them? I won’t let some vermin touch me.” She then talks about how, for one little moment, she thought about letting him bleed out in surgery rather than save the life of a racist. We don’t know at this point in the story what country or era we’re in, but by the end of the first ensemble scene in Gernand’s play, now in a mostly compelling and solid production with Ego Death Theatre Collective at the Greenhouse under Enrico Spada’s direction, it’s clear that we’re in a small town in Germany in 1933 at the start of Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship. Year OneThrough 11/22: Thu–Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM; Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln, 773-404-7336, egodeaththeatrecollective.org or greenhousetheater.org, $29 But the fact that—at least momentarily—I wondered if we were in the U.S.

This excerpt comes from the named source. Read the original for the full reporting.