‘The Baltimore Waltz’ presents powerful story and surprise ending

Attendees of “The Baltimore Waltz,” a USD production that ended March 21, witnessed a show that veered away from traditional play writing.

The broadway play was presented from March 17-21 and was directed by USD graduate student Ryan Fortney.

“I was asked to submit six shows for consideration, and then asked to defend one to direct,” Fortney said. “The reason I chose to defend ‘The Baltimore Waltz’ is because I felt it was unique to the other productions that we do in the department here. It seemed to cover topics that we don’t really talk about here, especially being in South Dakota.”

Fortney added that the play allowed its student actors to use different acting styles than they normally do. This included the way the stage was set up.

“So normally, plays are set up in a thrust, which has three sides and audience on one side, but the round, the way we set ours up, has the audience all around the stage,” Fortney said. “This makes our production different. Another unique factor to our performance is that our three lead roles are all freshman actors.”

“The Baltimore Waltz” is about a brother and sister, Carl and Anna, and their trek through Europe after finding out Anna has an incurable, made-up disease known as ATD or Acquired Toilet Disease, which can be transmitted from sitting on public toilets.

The play is a bit of a parallel to author Paula Vogel’s life, who lost her brother Carl Vogel to AIDS-related pneumonia in the late 1980s. Carl asked Paula to take a trip to Europe with her after discovering his AIDS diagnosis, but Paula couldn’t go.

First-year Daniel Frye, the actor playing Carl, said this production was different from past plays he’s been a part of in several ways.

“I was in ‘Young Frankenstein’ last semester, but this is my first lead role,” Frye said. “It’s a very intimate setting, the audience is always a foot away. It took some getting used to to have the audience so close to us, but it was almost better for the actors, because it helps to hear them snicker.”

“The Baltimore Waltz” takes place in the John Hopkins Medical Center of Baltimore, M.D. The set was created to look like a hospital by using hospital curtains for curtains.

As the play goes on, the plot spirals deeper into events and secrets of Carl and Anna’s trip, which include Anna’s multiple partners and a secretive follower Carl has in Amsterdam.

“In most theatrical works, there’s this idea of the sublime where you forget you’re watching a play and it feels like you’re just witnessing this event,” Fortney said. “We’re fighting against that here, we want you at all times to feel like you’re watching a play. So you’re constantly thinking about the experience you’re having.”

The directing style was what Fortney hoped would really send the message of the story to the audience, he said.

In the end, the audience finds out the entire trip was part of Carl’s imagination. It turns out that Carl was the one diagnosed with AIDS. The play was based in the 1980s when the medical community didn’t know very much about AIDS, so Carl created Anna’s disease in his imagination to distract from his own fatal reality.