Through The Leaves

Behind the door of a small butcher shop, Through the Leaves scrutinizes the deep inner lives of Martha and Otto. Martha is an independent woman, a butcher, and a small-business owner. Fueled by a sexual attraction that borders on violence, Otto and Martha are locked in a battle balancing independence and partnership. Raw, ruthless, and reaching for beauty, Through the Leaves is an unflinching interrogation of brutality and loneliness.

The CalArts School of Theater production Through the Leaves, directed by Brittney Brady (Theater MFA 20), opens on Thursday (Dec. 6) and runs through the following Thursday, Dec. 13.
Written by German dramatist Franz Xaver Kroetz in 1976, Through the Leaves is about the bleak, brutal relationship between Martha, a butcher who is desperate with loneliness, and Otto, a domineering factory worker. Played by School of Theater actors Juliana Alvarez (Theater BFA 20) and Samuel Garnett (Theater BFA 20), Marth and Otto “are locked in a battle balancing independence and partnership,” according to the program.

We had a chance to correspond with Brady, who shared her perspective on the play’s themes and how it resonates in today’s world:
Through the Leaves is a fable of brutality and loneliness. Martha and Otto are so rigidly confined by their circumstances, the society that they live in and their own habits and perspectives that it creates an unbearable pressure within them. Otto responds to that pressure with force and violence, impulses rooted in a desire for control. The play consciously represents the brutality of a man against a woman in order to reveal a diseased society.

I have been thinking a lot about what Hannah Arendt said about loneliness: ‘What prepares men for totalitarian domination…is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an every day experience of the ever-growing masses of our century.’

In response to which aspect of the play has been the most challenging for her as a director, Brady discussed the difficulty of being in direct contact with such dark material. “The play raises a lot of questions, but doesn’t really offer any answers. It resists a certain kind of understanding, which can be a hard pill to swallow,” she writes. “It’s been very gratifying to work with such amazing artists and collaborators who are willing to consciously go to there with me. Together, we’ve created a strong container for that engagement that’s built on mutual trust and love.”

Performed by:
Martha | Juliana Morgan Alvarez
Otto | Samuel Garnett

Creative Team:
Production Stage Manager: Ethan Hollander
Production Manager: Ni Li
Technical Director: Mitchell Leitschuh
Scenic Designer: Songyi Park
Costume Designer: Edurne Fernandez
Lighting Designer: Christine Ferriter
Sound Designer: Bo Li
Scenic Artist: Rashi Jain
Composer: Evan Johnson
Video Designer: Christopher Jungwoo Kim
Director of Photography: Siru Wen
Fight Director: Steve Rankin
Asst. Lighting Designers: Christian Mejia & Euisun Yoon
Asst. Sound Designer: Jacenta Yu
Asst. Costume Designer: Selena Jin
Asst. Video Designer: Kathleen Fox
Assistant Technical Director: Francisco De Leon
Assistant Scenic Artists: Andrew Carey & Kato Lawton
Production Associate: Patrick Smith
Assistant Stage Manager: Gina De Luca
Assistant Production Manager: Jin Li
Assistant Scenic Designer: Tzu Hsiang
General Manager: Rui Xu
Marketing Manager: Sophie Blumberg
Digital Communications Manager: Jared Pixler
Line Producers: Xiaoyue Zhang, Alyse James
Resident Dramaturg: Changting Lu