Young German girls in the 1940s risking their lives to taste Hitler’s food so their beloved Fuhrer doesn’t get poisoned? Complicated. Stories from a diverse group of today’s adolescents about how they grapple with challenges that test generations of their elders? Arresting. The aftermath of a 2018 shooting in a high school Holocaust history class by a student gunman with swastikas etched into his boots? Harrowing.

Playwright Michelle Kholos Brooks doesn’t mess around: These three concepts are the foundation of three of her current and future plays. Each in its own way feels around inside a wound, seeking the trauma’s cause and diagnosing its consequences.

he Hitler’s Tasters photo is from a rehearsal for the Rogue Machine production

Brooks’ play Hitler’s Tasters had a 2020 Los Angeles run cut short due to you-know-what, but it’s back with a vengeance from Rogue Machine at the Matrix. Simultaneously, her Project Fear (And All the Feels), based on 50 interviews with adolescents she conducted, is running on the campus of Santa Monica College, a production of the SMC) Theatre Arts Department runs. And Room 1214, based on interviews with a teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, will be produced in New York in November 2024.

In Hitler’s Tasters, now promoted as H*tler’s Tasters, the parallels between then and now are clear. Brooks says, “It was important for me that it didn’t feel like the girls were sepia-toned. So much of what they were dealing with is what we’re dealing with today. As Mark Twain said, ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes.’ I was seeing a lot of rhyming as I was doing research on World War II.”

Brooks originally submitted Hitler’s Tasters to a female playwriting competition in New Jersey about seven years ago. A director named Sarah Norris was randomly assigned; since then, Brooks says, “She has helped shape this play as much as I have.” Norris has directed the show in New York, at the Edinburgh Fringe  Festival, and on to Chicago, North Carolina, Kentucky and now Los Angeles.

When asked about how the Holocaust continues to be explored as a theme in plays, movies and books, Brooks responds, “I really don’t think about this as a Holocaust play because the girls are all German and suffering in a different way. Nobody was safe then. Now a lot of things are compared to the Holocaust; it’s almost become a meme in some ways.”

Hitler’s Tasters walks the line between comedy and tragedy. “I don’t set out to do one or the other,” Brooks notes. “Most of my work crosses over. That’s because even though I go down the rabbit hole into the darkness, I need a break. And if I need one, the audience really does.

“So much humor comes out of truth and real situations, from recognizing the truth and putting people in a pressurized situation, then watching what they do to fight their way out.” She adds, “To hold onto humor is to hold onto humanity. Humor is also a gateway emotion: if you can laugh, you can open yourself up to other things. If you can make someone laugh, they might be able to hear something they otherwise couldn’t.”

The playwright tapped into her background as a public radio journalist when writing the docu-plays Project Fear (And All the Feels) and Room 1214. “At some point, pre-COVID,” she remembers, “I was thinking about what a shitty time it is to be a young person because of social media and school shootings. [For Project Fear] I thought it would be cool to write a play about teens, for teens. Most of the time in a high school play, students are playing older people. How cool would it be if they could play kids their own age?”

Brooks interviewed 50 middle and high schoolers about the fears of their generation, from gender identity to systemic racism to gun violence. “Then I made a play with way too many characters.”

For Room 1214, Brooks interviewed Ivy Schamis, the Holocaust history teacher who lost two students when a former student at the school entered her class, where students were giving reports on hate crimes.

Hitler’s Tasters runs from April 27 to June 3 at Rogue Machine at the Matrix, 7657 Melrose Ave. Tickets are $45 and can be purchased here. Project Fear (And All the Feels) from the Santa Monica College (SMC) Theatre Arts Department runs April 19-28 at the Theatre Arts Studio Stage on the main SMC campus, 1900 Pico Blvd. Performances on April 19 and April 21 include audience talkbacks. Tickets are $18-20 in advance, $3 more purchased onsite, and parking is free. Room 1214 will be produced in November 2024.