Bent

Strawdog Theatre, Chicago

About the Show

Under the unrelenting gaze of concentration camp guards, two men become riveted by each other and the tender, terrified love that sparks between them. A Pulitzer Prize-nominated WWII drama from Martin Sherman, Bent takes place in 1930s Berlin, as two lovers are thrown onto a train to Dachau as part of the Gestapo’s plan to cleanse the city of “perverts.” One denies his lover at the hands of the guards — but while at the camp he learns that true dignity lies in acknowledging who he is. Compelling, erotic, and even heartbreakingly witty, Bent focuses on Nazi persecution of queer-identified people, whose experiences have often been cast to the margins of Holocaust narratives. Sherman draws exquisitely detailed characters, each of whom embodies a different personal relationship to queer (or “bent”) desire in 1930s Germany.