The lights dimmed as “A View from the Bridge” by Arthur Miller began its final performance Saturday at 2 p.m. Department of Theatre students performed the play Nov. 7-8 and Nov. 12-15 at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.
“A View from the Bridge” takes place in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, in the 1950s, exploring themes of immigration, justice and love.
It follows the story of Eddie Carbone, his wife Beatrice and his niece Catherine. Beatrice’s cousins, Marco and Rodolpho, come to the United States from Italy for a better future for themselves and their family. The character Alfieri, a lawyer, narrates the play, giving context to the audience and conversing with Eddie about his conflicts throughout the play. Throughout the play, Eddie has a protectiveness over and obsession with Catherine, leading him to make questionable choices.
Ari Warner, junior in FAA, played Beatrice, and they especially like the play because it comments on immigration and the public’s relationship with it, especially displaying individuals’ varying views regarding undocumented immigrants.
Warner explains Beatrice as the glue that “holds the family together” as their character deals with Eddie’s “faux incestuous relationship” with Beatrice’s niece.
Get The Daily Illini in your inbox!
“It’s me, Beatrice, discovering this fact and discovering that he has this sort of weird possession … over somebody that we raised,” Warner said. “It’s navigating as a wife and as an aunt how to keep the relationship.”
They also explained that Eddie dangles power above Marco and Rodolpho’s heads because Eddie can send them back to Italy.
“It’s a power play in a weird way,” Warner said. “Exploring this weird relationship with how people view immigrants from a small scale would be a really interesting look into how people are treating normal people from different countries as animals in today’s age.”
Erica Feagin, graduate student studying sound design and a sound designer for the play, created sound effects and conveyed the “sonic landscape” of Red Hook in the ’50s. The play was assigned to her for a semester assignment.
“The story is super relevant to everything that we have going on in our political climate right now,” Feagin said. “A lot of it is dealing with the cyclical nature of immigration policy in the United States and a take on what it truly means to be immigrants.”
Act I highlights the themes of immigration and love. When Beatrice announces to Eddie and Catherine that her relatives from Italy will come to the United States for better opportunities, Eddie emphasizes silence about her relatives’ presence since Marco and Rodolpho are undocumented. When Rodolpho and Catherine meet for the first time, they immediately show interest in one another.
Because of Eddie’s possessiveness over Catherine, Eddie goes to Alfieri to do something about Rodolpho. However, Alfieri explains that he cannot do anything about Rodolpho unless his immigration status is brought up, about which Eddie gets defensive. Eddie’s possessiveness increases when he aggressively teaches Rodolpho to fight. Act I ends with Marco picking up a chair by one of its legs, holding the chair over Eddie as a light shines on him; here, Eddie realizes that he does not have much control over Marco or Rodolpho.
Act II perpetuates themes of immigration and love and includes themes of power and betrayal. Eddie feels distraught that he lacks power over Catherine, so he reports Marco and Rodolpho to the Immigration Bureau. In this action, he betrays his family and Beatrice’s relatives simply because he does not want Catherine to be with anyone else.
Marco and Rodolpho are arrested by officers wearing black sunglasses and masks below their eyes. The themes of immigration and justice are the focal point as chorus members hold up U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement signs, signalling their protest against the arrest since Marco and Rodolpho immigrated to support their family abroad. Alfieri speaks once more. Everything goes dark.
Madeleine Carroll, senior in FAA, was the audio engineer for the play; she created and orchestrated the sound designer’s vision.
“Arthur Miller, his work is timeless, and it, sadly, right now, is extremely resonant in this country,” Carroll said. “It’s a great story to tell … especially in a college town.”
Gwen Docter, a graduate student at the University of Iowa, came to see the show because she wanted to catch up on the classics. Docter also had a friend in the show and a friend who goes to the University.
“For those that perhaps are in support of what ICE does, I think perhaps seeing this show would be a lot more humanizing because I feel like there was no point where we’re meant to root against Rodolpho and Marco,” Docter said after the show.
Docter thought that this performance of the play was very timely because of its discussion of immigration, which she thought was “very well spoken” within the play. And, because it was an Arthur Miller play, she knew it was going to be good.
“A lot of hard work went into the making of this show,” Warner said. “It’s a very emotionally taxing show, but every night, the same people come, and we make it happen … This is a story I care about, and I hold dear to my heart.”
