Playwright

Steve Carter

Cast

Jeffrey Lieber: Chaim Lux
Michael Shapiro: Willie Herman
MIchael Johnson: Oliver Weymon
Robert Cornelius: Gus Bass
John Judd: Karl Leyden
Ned Schmidtke: Pug Masterman
David Mink: Paul Garrison
Charley Knapp: Lew Ankrum
Ned Mochel: Al Goode
Tom McCarthy: Russell Carlson
Timothy Hendrickson: Anthony Meade
Vergil Smith: Aydee Childs
Ray Thompson: Jayce Fairclough
Cara Newman: Hedwig Buchmann

Summary

Most Americans know that Adolf Hitler politicized the 1936 summer Olympics, reducing an international event to a racist showcase for the supposed supremacy of Aryan athletes. It wasn’t as if we hadn’t been warned: fearful of playing into his propaganda trap, the Amateur Athletic Union, along with Jewish groups and civic leaders, had urged the U.S. team to boycott the Munich charade. But politics prevailed.
A midwest premiere by Victory Gardens Theater and the Theatre of the First Amendment (of Fairfax, Virginia), Spiele ’36 or the Fourth Medal dutifully retells the ugly scandal, its edifying purpose to show how embattled minorities, the Jewish runners and their black teammates, forged an alliance in the teeth of Hitler’s hate. If it didn’t quite happen this way (and much here is speculation), it should have. (Source credited: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/spiele-36-or-the-fourth-medal/Content?oid=878806)