copyright 2000
About Music and Text
"With Kate's [Chisholm] encouragement and advice, I
have been working for the last year on rewriting the piece, primarily to keep the stylistic epic-theater aspect
of the first act more consistent through all three acts of the piece."
Ken Vega
Originally, Kenneth Vega had intended to create each act in a entirely different style. When that become too confusing, he changed his approach and united all the material in the Brechtian style of epic theater. The text has gone through three major drafts, but many of these revisions have resulted in only minor changes. One major change was the addition of a third female actress to play Hannah Hoch. The presence of the character of Bertolt Brecht in the second and third act was also added later, to "heighten the sense of epic theater style throughout the play."
A great inspiration for Vega's theater work has been the collaboration of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht.He says,"In Heartfield this [inspiration] is blatant, especially in the first act, which is virtually an homage to Brecht-Weill." Several songs have been added or deleted. And because "the play was meant to be collage, many of the songs have been fragmented in different ways." The song "We Can Change the World" is almost identical to the first draft.
Since the actors are doing a lot of singing and playing multiple roles (see actor's process), the choreography of the musical is simple - a tap dance and a tango are the only dances imagined by the author.