Fatherland, 24 September 2024

Fatherland was a verbatim play—the entire script was taken from direct quotes from court transcripts, statements, correspondence, and publications regarding an eighteen year old son (Patrick Keleher) who turned his father (Ron Bottitta) in to the FBI for participation in and incitement of the January 6 riots at the United States Capitol. The play was fast paced and deeply engaging as we watched two lives take shape around each other. I was particularly fascinated by the son’s initial remembrances of his father as someone with whom he could comfortably have political discourse, and how that relationship devolved into someone he was afraid to look at. The slippery slope portrayed in this play is a powerful reminder of how fast people can change, how far people can go, and how little guilt can actually erase.

The lighting design (Alison Brummer) and sound design (Stewart Blackwood) were both powerful and beautiful ways to take us in and out of time. They gave us clues as to the differences in what the characters perceived and what the world perceived at the time of the Capitol riots. The son experienced the horror of seeing his father on television and Facetime, while the father experienced the violence that ensued with Capitol police. Though I do not in any way condone the January 6 riots, the scene where the father described his experiences of rubber bullets and bear gas did give me pause as to why these were the resources Capitol police have on hand. The sound design was particularly powerful in how it grew to fill the room. We felt Trump’s words first in a limited area in the father’s head, and then the audio faded into more and more speakers around the room, until we as an audience were part of the experience and surrounded as though at an event. This technique was brilliantly used, and helped contextualize the excitement of being a part of something greater than oneself.

Keleher really shone in Fatherland, walking a nuanced line between hesitance and strength. His morality was clear, as was his guilt surrounding hurting those he was close to out of a sense of responsibility for the greater good of his country. Keleher’s guilt was heartbreaking because, in the end, it was his father who was found guilty of actual crimes. It was demeaning to watch the cross examiner suggest that the son, who was so young and vulnerable, would be willing to lose his entire family for fortune or fame, or fail to recognize a mental illness in a father who didn’t even notice his son’s distress. Worth noting, the amount in the son’s Go Fund Me account is not that far above the gross income for a two person household in a lot of parts of the US. He did not become filthy rich—just doing well enough to try to move forward with his life.

What makes Fatherland so remarkable is the verbatim text still allowing for subtext and role reversals and characters who grow and change. The father started out reading Trump’s books and sincerely thinking about how Trump’s America might put him back on top from before he left Panang. He sought community, became a leader, began to feel important. He set out to create a better world. He ended up being told he was guilty, but based on his emotionally manipulative closing statement about not recognizing his son he did not feel the guilt. This sounds like the journey of a child into adolescence. On the other hand, the teenage son started out sure of his politics, began taking steps to protect his mother from the way his father talks to her, assumed the adult responsibility of doing his duty to protect his country, found a way to live with the consequences of his actions, and should have walked away with a clean slate instead of his tremendous guilt. Feeling that responsibility and sacrificing everything for it sounds like the journey of an adolescent into adulthood.

Both father and son put their duty to their country over their duty to their family. In doing so, they become unrecognizable to each other. The sadder thing was that they also became irreconcilable. The cost of their country was their emotional and psychological well being. In the final moment, we see them both standing side by side, wondering if it was worth it. This is the true divisiveness of our country—it’s not political red and blue; it’s politics as a home wrecker when political differences cannot be put aside and we become strangers to the ones who shape and created us.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Keith Sherman & Associates.