Experimental Fascism Never Is A Good Idea


A teacher can‘t answer the question of a student. Without trying to flatter anyone, this situation is more rare than some may assume. Yet, it is exactly the situation that Ben Ross, a history teacher at an American High school in the late 1960s, is faced with after showing his students footage of concentration camps. And since he cannot find any answer to the question of ”Why did so many Germans go along with it?“, he decides to find his own answer by attempting an experiment — by modelling fascism in the classroom, to be precise.


What I have just explained is the premise of the play ”The Wave“, which is a dramatization (Paul Stebbings, Phil Smith) of the novel by Morton Rhue. Grades eleven and twelve visited a performance of this play on the 5th of October at the „Uckermärkische Bühnen Schwedt“. The production was put on by TNT Theatre Britain and The American Drama Group Europe, troupes which tour internationally and Europe-wide respectively.
Now, to really be able to understand any opinions on the play, you will have to know some more details of the plot as well as the way in which it was performed. A fair warning: spoilers are ahead.


As one could assume, the experiment mentioned above starts of relatively well — the students are motivated by the new method, the discipline, the community. One student, Robert, is especially pleased with this new-found community and practically flourishes. But good things never last, and The Wave starts going down a very bad path, turning aggressive (especially towards outsiders and critics). But it continues growing. Laurie, another student in the class, starts to feel very uncomfortable with it and tries to find a way to stop it from going too far. She ends up publishing reports of teenagers that were harassed by Wave members, noting that there was a lot of pressure to join.

Eventually, her boyfriend David also sees the issue with The Wave, even though he was so far in that their relationship was in jeopardy. Together, they try to convince Mr. Ross to end the project, which he does in the final scene – – first leading all Wave members to believe that there was a bigger movement, a chance for change, a leader, even; only to reveal that if there was a leader, it would have been Adolf Hitler. He concludes by saying that they all would have been very fine Nazis. Most people, like David and Laurie’s friend Eric, are shocked and at the same time strangely relieved that The Wave is over, understanding the gravity of the situation, understanding that the answer to ”Why did nobody stop them?“ was a matter of all the intricate psychological workings of group mentality. Robert, however, is dissatisfied. Just before the lights go out, you can see him swinging a baseball bat at the back of a kneeling Mr. Ross, the baseball bat being the same one he wanted to use for Mr. Ross’s protection when The Wave was still a reality. Minimal would be the way to describe the production in a single word. There were five actors for eight characters (not counting ”background“ characters, though, when they were there, these were also portrayed by the five actors). Most of the sets were arranged with wooden boxes, creating desks, chairs, bleachers and more. The costumes were simple but, broadly speaking, historically accurate. There were also some additional props such as flags, cards, books and a radio. These were not simplified. Furthermore, you had some “air props“, as in a phone that wasn‘t actually there but mimed by the actor who was ”using“ it.


Apart from this, two factors stand out about this play: There was quite some singing, mostly in between, but sometimes also within scenes (when there was a set change); and audience interaction, in which we were animated to clap along. Now, the singing (along with the general sound design) was probably used to create a certain mood. But the interaction most probably had a different function altogether: My (and my class‘s) theory is that it was implemented to prove the point of the play that people will naturally want to go along with what others are doing, if only to fit in.


Overall, the reaction to the play was neutral-positive (to my knowledge). It wasn‘t deemed hard to understand, though there were some problems with the acoustics in the beginning. This (the not-hard- to-understand part) is likely due to the language, which was relatively simple, and the fact that the general plot was previously known to many students from their ethics or history classes.
A personal point of critique would be the over-emphasis on individualism and the general dismissal of community. I do not think that this was necessarily intended, and I can understand the difficulty in treading the line between not getting brainwashed and only thinking of yourself because you think for yourself, if that makes any sense. But it did end up seeming a bit too individualistic, which can also be due to the setting of America in the 1960s, which was not an ideal time or place to praise the word “community”. Other than that, I think it was well-executed and paced, especially in comparison to the German movie.


Maya Miyata