Interview: Director Luke Harlan of THE ARSONISTS at Skylight Theatre

Written by Max Frisch in the aftermath of World War II and echoing into our present, The Arsonists is an absurdly funny and quietly chilling modern parable about what happens when our desire to be good prevents us from doing good. Taking place in a time when arsonists have begun setting fires in neighboring towns and no one will speak up about the situation, this exhilarating satire of self-deception examines the remarkable human capacity to ignore the obvious. Promising a compelling blend of theatrical virtuosity and wit, this headline-relevant commentary shines with our “in the moment” nightmares on contemporary denial and political apathy. 

I spoke with the play’s director Luke Harlan, an award-winning director and Emmy-nominated producer whose work spans theater, television, and feature films, about his vision for the production about ordinary people who allow something dangerous to enter their lives, setting a pattern that can carry through generations when apathy impedes good judgment. Here's what he had to say!

As a director with an MFA from Yale School of Drama and an Emmy-nominated career in television and film, what does working on a play like this allow you to explore that you might not be able to explore in those other mediums? 

The audience. That's the biggest difference. In television and film you can create something incredibly intimate, but the audience isn't in the room with you. In theater, they are part of the event. Their laughter changes the actors. Their silence changes the actors. They become a community for ninety minutes, whether they intended to or not. And this particular play is constantly aware of that. It looks at the audience. It speaks to them. It asks them questions. There is no pretending that we aren't all sitting in the same room watching this happen together. That feels incredibly exciting to me right now. Theater can actually make us aware of one another in a way very few things in our lives do anymore.

What was it about the story that made you want to direct it now?

Frisch called The Arsonists a ‘morality play without a moral.’ That idea feels increasingly rare to me today since we live in a moment where we're constantly told what to think, who the heroes and villains are, and where we belong in the story. This play isn't interested in any of that. It just asks us to watch, to pay attention, to think. But what struck me most when I first read the play was just how funny it is. It's my favorite kind of humor: ha ha ... ouch. We don't need another play that tells us what to think. We need plays that remind us how to think—and, perhaps more importantly, how to think together. This feels exactly like that kind of play.

Director Luke Harlan
Photo credit: David Esquivel

What makes this the right play for Los Angeles right now?

Los Angeles is a city full of people making things, imagining things, reinventing themselves - but it can also be an incredibly isolating place. We spend so much time in our cars, in our houses, on our phones, inside our own little worlds. And at the same time we're living through a moment of enormous political and social anxiety, where it can feel like everybody has retreated into their own corner and decided everyone outside it is the enemy. So gathering a group of strangers in a room to laugh together and wrestle with a play that refuses to tell them what to think feels radical to me. That's part of why I wanted to make theater here again. We need places where we can actually be together.

The fascinating question at the heart of the play is why do people recognize a threat and still choose to accommodate it? What have you discovered about that question through rehearsals with the actors?

I think the thing we've discovered is that nobody thinks they are choosing disaster. They are making a series of tiny, completely understandable decisions. They want to be polite. They don't want to seem cruel. They don't want to overreact. They don't want to embarrass themselves. They want to believe the best of people. And each decision makes the next one a little easier. That's what is so brilliant and so terrifying about the play. If the central character were simply stupid, we could sit in the audience and feel superior to him. But he isn't. His reasoning is often completely recognizable. The danger is not that he can't see what is happening. He can. The danger is how incredibly good human beings are at explaining away what they see.

How did you and the actors approach making the characters recognizable and human rather than simply foolish or culpable?

That was probably the most important thing for us. Nobody can know they are in a satire. Nobody can play the message of the play. Every character has to believe that what they are doing makes complete sense. We spent a lot of time asking what each person actually wants in every moment, and usually the answer is very ordinary. They want to be liked. They want to feel safe. They want dinner to go well. They want somebody to sit down. They want to avoid an uncomfortable conversation. And once you get down to that level, they stop being symbols and become people. That's also where the comedy gets much better. The more seriously they take their circumstances, the funnier and more painful the play becomes.

What do you hope audiences will be talking about on the way home after seeing The Arsonists?

I hope they're laughing first. I really do. I want people to have a great time. And then maybe on the drive home, something they laughed at starts to bother them a little bit. I don't particularly want everybody to leave agreeing about what the play "means." In fact, I'd be suspicious if they did. Frisch called it a "morality play without a moral," and I think that's essential. I hope people argue about it. I hope they recognize different things in it depending on their own lives and beliefs. Mostly I hope they keep talking. Theater doesn't have to give us the answer. Sometimes its most useful function is simply to get a group of people asking the same difficult question together.

If potential audience members are apathetic about attending a performance, how would you entice them to see it?

I'd say come expecting a comedy. A strange, fast, wildly theatrical comedy. A lot of people behaving very badly while insisting that everything is perfectly fine. You absolutely do not need to know the play or Max Frisch or anything about post-war European theater. It's ninety minutes, it's very funny, and then hopefully somewhere along the way you start to realize the joke might be on all of us.

Thanks so much!

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