Last Monday evening, a handful of Brandeisians gathered in the atrium of the Mandel Center for the Humanities to see the new play: Voltaire and Frederick: a Life in Letters. At the head of the rows of seats were two comfy chairs occupied by Thomas Derrah and John Kuntz, founding members of the American Repertory Theater and the Actors' Shakespeare Project respectively, and acclaimed mainstays of the Boston theater world. The actors were dressed in professional-looking black suits, and each held a binder containing a series of letters written between the French philosopher Voltaire (Derrah) and Prussian King Frederick the Great (Kuntz). For about an hour and a half, the two read the letters to each other and brought to life a friendship maintained through letters, just before the French revolution.

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At first glance, Voltaire and Frederick the Great don't have much in common other than the fact that they lived during the same time period. Voltaire was one of the great philosophers of Europe's Enlightenment period, and, though he did not live to see it, his ideas were some of the most influential on the leaders of the French Revolution. Frederick the Great of Prussia was one of the country's most beloved leaders, as well as one of the most brilliant military generals in history. He was also one of the first kings of Europe to institute religious tolerance for the Jesuits and the Jews in addition to being an early royal promoter of the arts. 
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The two first came into contact in August 1736, when a 42-year-old Voltaire received a letter of admiration from a then 24-year-old student and Prussian Grand Prince Frederick. They began a friendship through letters that lasted until Voltaire's death in 1778; Frederick wrote his eulogy. In honor of Frederick the Great's 300th birthday this year, Voltaire and Frederick: a Life in Letters was commissioned by the Goethe-Institut Boston in conjunction with the French General Consulate in Paris. The play is directed and produced by Guy Ben-Aharon, founder of Israeli Stage, a program dedicated to introducing Israeli theater to the United States, and was brought to Brandeis by Prof. Sabine von Mering (GER).
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Through the voices of Derrah and Kuntz, Voltaire and Frederick's relationship and all of its ups and downs came through very well. The extremely personal and thoughtful letters reveal everything from Voltaire's admiration for Frederick's hatred of traditional aristocracy to Frederick's struggle with balancing living as an enlightened man and the pressures of being a king. Their friendship was strained when Voltaire became disdainful of the great conqueror's penchant for violence, and Frederick had Voltaire's satirical works burned in the streets. 
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Voltaire and Frederick was a play I was really interested in, and I was not dissapointed. I have studied the Enlightenment in high school, and I read Voltaire's Candide in one of my literature classes this semester. Walking in, I didn't know anything about Frederick the Great and little about Voltaire outside what I had learned during my in-class discussions about his life. The play taught me more about how the men thought and how they went about their lives. The letters were never shown to anyone else until they were discovered, so they are a real window into the minds of both Frederick and Voltaire.
It was also interesting because although the performances required almost no movement, Derrah and Kuntz managed to bring all of the passion and intellect communicated between these two legendary men. 
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When I first realized what format the performance would be using, I was  worried that watching a pen-pal relationship would be boring, no matter how interesting the characters were. However, Derrah and Kuntz have amazing and powerful voices which complement the style of the play to an amazing degree. Their commitment to the characters is obvious through their intonations, hand movements and how they emphasized specific words and phrases. Ben-Aharon must have known this while working with them and clearly made a specific choice in how to handle to format in such a way that brought out the actors' skills as orators. Voltaire and Frederick is overall a very smart and worthwhile play that offers a fascinating insight into two very close friends who struggled with their differences in ways that are hard to even imagine. But, Derrah and Kuntz bring that friendship to life so well that you don't have to imagine. All you have to do is listen to the letters.