Trudie Lee
The cast of Ilsa
One Yellow Rabbit restages the controversial Ilsa
The story of how the titular sexpot of films like Ilsa She Wolf of the SS found her way into the company of real-life Albertan Holocaust denier Jim Keegstra begins at a kitchen party. Tossing off a racy lyric challenging Keegstra’s denial with a sultry “if this isn’t flesh what is” Kirk Miles set One Yellow Rabbit’s Blake Brooker to the task of tracing an arc between the sensational trial of the former Eckville high school teacher and the camp both literal and figurative of the Ilsa caricature.
The result premièred in the Rabbits’ Big Secret Theatre in May 1987 as Ilsa Queen of the Nazi Love Camp and the musical proved to be popular and contentious enough that its life now extends all the way into the Rabbits’ 25th anniversary season.
Following a pair of former Nazis — The Colonel and his camp’s brothel madam Ilsa — Ilsa finds its way to Keegstra in the pair’s search for lost samples of Hitler’s preserved sperm (a nod to The Boys From Brazil ). Now an auto mechanic resigned to explaining the twisted logic of his denials to whoever will listen Keegstra (Andy Curtis) finds in The Colonel (Michael Green) and Ilsa (Denise Clarke) an aggressive confrontation — devotees to the reality he wants to undermine.
“It was 10 years he got away with it” says Clarke of Keegstra’s in-class Holocaust denials. “He was the principal of the school mayor of the town before someone went ‘Wait what did he say? What’s the book he told you to read?’”
“Ten years” she repeats. “It’s gobsmacking.”
From its first remount then focusing on the widespread indignation against Keegstra became an essential feature of the production scaling back the play’s camp in lieu of intensifying its satire. Brooker now directing substituted Burkett’s cross-dressing for Clarke’s bona fide female form which also gave the production its first choreograper. (According to Clarke the changeover was an easy one: “[Burkett] also hated shaving his body. He had a nasty rash at the end of the thing. I remember it vividly.”)
Even with the importance of the play’s social core — a reminder driven home starkly at its conclusion — Clarke notes the challenges of preserving its roots in absurdity. Songs (David Rhymer) and dance (Clarke) still bookend the play’s confrontation. “It’s a fine line because you don’t want to sabotage the show by making it loftier than it is” says Clarke. “At the same time you don’t want to shortchange the audience on being able to clearly see the cartoon aspect and you don’t want to take away from the real shivery moments of the piece.”
Keegstra for one was never written as a straw man to be torn apart. As Martin Morrow proves in Wild Theatre a history of One Yellow Rabbit that includes an entire chapter devoted to Ilsa and its fallout taken from the right angle Keegstra might be a folk hero fighting against an unjust conspiracy. Certainly as written Ilsa ’s Keegstra is a man whose beliefs are grounded firmly in a consistent if obtuse world view. “Only what if the hero is really a crackpot?” asks Morrow. “What if his ‘conspiracy’ is a load of horse manure a heap of foul anti-Semitic rubbish?”
As it happened the question of Keegstra’s right to spread his views affected Ilsa directly when Keegstra’s re-trial over willfully promoting hatred against an identifiable group began in 1992. Based on fears that media coverage had led to the overturning of the original trial’s conviction a blanket publication ban was issued forcing the production to close.
“We were absolutely devastated” recalls Clarke. “First of all we really believed in our show. We thought that it was the absolute perfect balance to having a Keegstra operating among us. By the time the injunction came along it was pure coincidence that Northern Lights had brought the show to Edmonton and then the appeal trial came up and there was no convincing Keegstra or the judge [that it was a coincidence].”
With respect to Justice Arthur Lutz’s decision however she adds: “If I was running a trial to convict a hate criminal I wouldn’t want a bunch of young punks to fuck up my trial.”
In the aftermath of the injunction facing the loss of an entire run’s worth of budgeted revenue the company staged the Banned in Alberta Benefit Cabaret and after Keegstra was re-convicted the company was able to produce Ilsa again both in Alberta and abroad.
If the journey from a kitchen party lyric to a Red Deer courtroom was a difficult one it isn’t one the Rabbits have shied from. “It certainly activated our political muscle and our desire to be good citizens and it’s what we all care about” says Clarke. “We’re very serious about wanting to make our city a better place to live. And I’m not sure of what that involves but it certainly involves making intelligent comment on people who are spreading hate which is I think part of our job.”
