A special, one-night-only performance of Seeking Nietzsche will be co-produced by JCC Indianapolis and Southbank! Mark your calendars for Thursday, September 26 at 7pm. Tickets will be $20, and there will be a talkback after the show.
EXTENDED DATES: Three extra performances have been added at our home theatre, Shelton Auditorium, on Friday-Sunday, October 4-6! Tickets link is forthcoming. Tickets at Shelton will be $29 General Admission, $24 students/seniors/military. Ticketmaster fees apply to tickets purchased online only — not at the door. If you’d like to purchase tickets online anyway, click here to do so!
Named the Most Impressive Production of a Drama in 2023 by Daniel Shock of A Seat on the Aisle, Seeking Nietzsche chronicles the life, relationships, and madness of a philosopher who shocked the world and created modernity.
With the nationalist composer Richard Wagner as Friedrich Nietzsche’s surrogate father and the Nazis’ appropriation of Wagner’s music and Nietzsche’s philosophy, many have questioned whether Nietzsche and his works are on the right side of history. Seeking Nietzsche ponders who determines the answer to this question. When Nietzsche falls into madness, his nationalist sister, Elisabeth, takes over the management of his literary estate, but knowing that the siblings disagree on just about everything, Nietzsche’s friend, Lou Salomé, takes it upon herself to recover Nietzsche’s legacy and reveal his inner psychology. Meanwhile, Elisabeth outlives Nietzsche by thirty-five years and becomes close to Hitler. Influenced by Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence, as well as his madness at the end of his life, the narrative jumps back and forth in time and into the afterlife to tell the tale of the ever-suffering philosopher.
“This play hits ‘rewind’ on the violently interpreted concepts such as the ‘ubermensch,’ bringing us back to the contrary yet certain man who went out for a walk and came back with some insight. A brilliant exploration of a man, his philosophy, and how they molded each other before changing the world.” ~ John Belden – read the rest of the review here
“I love plays and movies that have ideas or something to say. This is such a play. I was never bored in all of its 90 minutes. I will say that sometimes I would find my mind wander briefly as I considered ideas that were coming at me. But that is not a criticism, it is a joy to be engaged intellectually in a performance.” ~ Daniel Shock – read the rest of the review here
“The balance and insight of Seeking Nietzsche goes beyond the documentary tasks that Eppich-Harris undertook when her fascination with Nietzsche assumed this particular form. Nothing about her examination of the Nietzsche tragedy goes too far in a search for relevance to continuing cultural anxieties. Seeking Nietzsche is on territory that honors both art and philosophy, even when both head in disastrously wrong directions.” ~ Jay Harvey – read the rest of the review here
“Marcia Eppich-Harris said of her play Seeking Nietzsche, ‘The play is so very much about ideas and the meaning of life and the legacy you leave behind, but it’s also about writing, being a writer and being a human being.’ That part about just being a human being resonated with me upon seeing the performance.” ~ Lisa Gauthier Mitchison – read the rest of the review here. Mitchison also wrote a profile on Marcia Eppich-Harris, Southbank, and Seeking Nietzsche here.
“Marcia Eppich-Harris’s exploration of the man, his philosophy, and his circle brings us closer to all of them; revealing the gulf between Nietzsche’s own characterization of himself, and the reality he lived and suffered through. Answering the philosopher’s call to love fate and embrace suffering, Seeking Nietzsche posits thoughtful questions about what it means to love someone, and what it means for that love to be unrequited, and whether Nietzsche’s own self-love may be the most unrequited of all.” ~ Tony Tambasco, New Play Exchange
Named one of the Top Ten Performing Arts Luminaries in Central Indiana by On the Aisle with Tom Alvarez, Marcia Eppich-Harris is the artistic director and founder of Southbank Theatre Company in Indianapolis. She holds a PhD in Shakespeare and Dramatic Literature and taught at the college level for over fifteen years. Her publications include plays, fiction, poetry, scholarship, interviews, and reviews. Her creative writing is influenced by the literature and history of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the British Medieval and Renaissance periods, and current events. Her writing focuses thematically on politics, philosophy, the arts, gender, family, and culture. Her ten minute plays have been produced nationwide and internationally, and local performances of her full-length plays include Seneca and the Soul of Nero, The Profession, her musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, for which she wrote the music and lyrics, and Seeking Nietzsche, which was named the most impressive production of a drama by Daniel Shock in 2023. The Profession (2023) and Seneca and the Soul of Nero (2024) were both published by Next Stage Press.
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