Mieko Ouchi: Two Plays.

Blue Light tells the story of Leni Riefenstahl, female film director, producer, and editor in a time when filmmaking was almost entirely man’s work, and whose innovations in cinematography were as widely admired as her film subjects were criticized. Riefenstahl made several films about German folktale and culture, but became infamous for her Nazi propaganda documentary The Triumph of the Will. The play shifts between several phases in Riefenstahl’s long life, ranging from her childhood, through the making of her first film, The Blue Light, and her personal and professional relationships with Goebbels and Hitler, to her attempt as an old woman to garner Hollywood support for a final film. Ouchi portrays a woman who, in each phase, puts her ambition, but also her genuine talent, ahead of personal and emotional attachments, and also above the age-old question of whether good art must also be in service of good morals and ethics. The play furthermore asks what defines that which is moral and ethical. Are these objective universal absolutes, or are they culturally defined and self-serving constructions?

In the play, Riefenstahl is good at closing her eyes to the question about the relationship between art and ethics; she insists that she did not know she was being used as an implement of Fascism, that she had no choice, that the only way a woman could succeed as a filmmaker was with the support of the structures of power, that she had no knowledge of the atrocities, etc. She refuses, until the last few lines, to judge herself, and this final moment is most ambiguous.