BERKELEY

Below The first edition of the novel It Can’t Happen Here
THE ORIGIN STORY
We’re beginning a new feature in our
programs this season which aims to shed some light
on how our shows find their way to Berkeley Rep.
Every production has a unique path to our stage, and
we thought it might be interesting to share a little bit
about how they got here.
Through a series of circumstances, we found
ourselves very late in the season planning process
without a season opener. This presented a fantastic
opportunity to work in a different way—i.e., fast and
furious. Normally new plays live in the pipeline for
years, taking their time to develop and evolve at their
own pace.
The artistic staff
pitched idea after idea
and titles ricocheted
among us at a frantic
pace. Michael Leibert
Artistic Director Tony
Taccone says, “[Associate
Director] Lisa
Peterson sent me an
extremely long text
with about 30 titles on
it all dealing with some
aspect of American
politics because the
election was looming. It
Can’t Happen Here stuck to the wall like spaghetti and
we kept coming back to it.”
Then we found out there was already an existing
stage adaptation and the stars seemed to be aligning.
Lisa, on a whim, had googled the phrase “it can’t
happen here” because it had been resonating in her
mind, but she says, “I had no idea about the novel or
the Federal Theatre Project history. I was amazed—
there’s this Sinclair Lewis novel, there’s this history of
it being a theatrical event, my God!”
It soon became clear that the 1930s adaptation
was in desperate need of updating, rendering it unusable
for our purposes. A new adaptation was needed.
You can read more about the development process in
the interview with Lisa, Tony, and co-writer Bennett
Cohen, but suffice it to say the chance to respond
swiftly to the current political climate we find ourselves
in proved irresistible, and the rest, as they say,
is history.
OUTSTRIPPED
AN INTERVIEW WITH TONY
In July, Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor held a
workshop of It Can’t Happen Here to revise the script and stage
sections of the play. Literary Manager Sarah Rose Leonard
grabbed Director Lisa Peterson, Michael Leibert Artistic
Director and Playwright Tony Taccone, and Co-writer Bennett
Cohen before a packed rehearsal day to discuss what it’s like
to adapt a novel into a play at breakneck speed and why this
particular story feels so urgent.
Sarah Rose Leonard: It Can’t Happen Here was adapted
into a play in 1936. Will you talk about why we aren’t
producing that adaptation and instead decided to create a
new one?
Tony Taccone: I was so excited to read the play. I love the
Federal Theatre Project. My dissertation was about it. So I
was like, “Yeah, we get to do a wpa [Work Projects Administration]
play!” But then I read it, and by the third scene, I
was like oh, this is not good. First of all, it’s nothing like the
book—it’s so melodramatic. It became clear, this is the reason
nobody’s remounted this. It has fallen into the dustbin of
history for a reason.
16 · THE BERKELEY REP MAGAZINE · 2016–17 · ISSUE 1