Baltimore Waltz

With Baltimore Waltz, playwright Paula Vogel pens a love note to her brother who recently passed away from AIDS-related complications. Anna and her brother embark upon a fantastical trip to Europe in order to flee the diagnosis of Acquired Toilet Disease, a fatal disease contracted by the sister from a school bathroom. Will they find an escape before reality sets in?

“…a crazy-quilt patchwork of hyperventilating language, erotic jokes, movie kitsch and medical nightmare…that spins before the audience in Viennese waltz time, replete with a dizzying fall.” —NY Times

“…an immensely likable winning comedy-drama…” —Hollywood Reporter

A Note from the Director

Brilliantly capturing her characters’ emotional disorientation in the face of a mysterious terminal disease, Paula Vogel invites us to experience an exhilarating roller-coaster ride that takes us from desperation to hope, anger to affection, fear to sexual longing. In our staging of Baltimore Waltz, we embrace the play’s complex juxtapositions and contrasting imagery as we blend fantasy with realism, exasperation with delight, and farcical grotesque with emotional availability. The boundary between reality and imagination blurs and the characters step in and out of Anna’s fantasy world as she journeys toward acceptance of her brother’s imminent death.

We intended to honor the play’s both political directness and ambiguity: while highlighting the heartbreaking love story between the sister and brother, we were also keenly aware of the play’s satirical references, especially in relation to the politics around the AIDS crisis in the late 1980s. In the spirit of Bertolt Brecht’s polemics about theatre as an instrument of change, we invite our audience to share the characters’ emotional journey but also address the significance of personal responsibility as we face political catastrophes and battle devastating health crises, locally and globally.

—Julia Listengarten, Director