Todd Schnake and Park Bucker
Why not? All the most interesting people are doing it, especially when Sigmund Freud meets C.S. Lewis.
In the 1970s, Harvard’s Dr. Armand Nicholi began to teach a course on Sigmund Freud. Over time, he added selections from the writings of C. S. Lewis to counterbalance Freud’s atheistic worldview. Eventually, the course became an explicit comparison of the lives, writings, and beliefs of these two great twentieth-century thinkers. In 2002, Dr. Nicholi published a book entitled The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund
Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life.
And suddenly we’re seeing the play Freud’s Last Session by Mark St. Germain in Kansas City, and the debate is on. Is there a God?
According to reviewer Corrina Higgins, “For a fan or scholar of Lewis (or, presumably, Freud), this hour-and-a-half is ninety minutes in heaven—or wherever Freudian scholars go to be happy. If they do.”
Playwright Mark St. Germain found himself inspired by these words: Did Freud and Lewis ever meet? The possibility is tantalizing. After Freud immigrated to England, he lived in Hampstead, in northwest London, not far from Oxford. A young Oxford professor visited Freud during this time but has not been identified. Might it have been Lewis? The play supposes it was.
It’s set on September 3, 1939, the day that England declared war on Germany and just three weeks before Freud’s death. The plot intensifies through the dramatic moments of that afternoon: Lord Chamberlain’s declaration of war, the sounding of an air-raid siren, and a horrible incident in Freud’s struggle with cancer.
Producing away from home at The Warwick, MET invites us into Freud’s study in the historic Simpson home. Local actors Todd Schnake and Park Bucker play C.S. Lewis and Freud respectively.
Todd Schnake, C.S. Lewis in the MET production, said, “C.S. Lewis and Freud stand in for the conversation that we all have within ourselves about the nature of faith and its place in our lives.”
Park Bucker, who plays Freud, said, “The play presents a delicious ‘what-if’ two of the greatest philosophical thinkers of the 20th century met? They engage with each other’s ideas through their published works. In this drama, they get to debate in person.”
And that’s always better.
Performances run November 22-24, 2024. For tickets call the MET Box office at 816-569-3226 or visit www.metkc.org. Seating is limited. Reserve early for the best seats!
–Karen Paisley
