Betsy Aidem (‘Prayer for the French Republic’) on Marcelle’s impossible choice: ‘I had nowhere to go but everywhere’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

During a pivotal moment in Joshua Harmon’s “Prayer for the French Republic,” Betsy Aidem desperately asks where she can take her family “to feel safe.” The question reverberates through the play as her character weighs whether to flee Paris following antisemitic violence. “History has taught us that these things don’t pass,” says Aidem, “it’s not a question from another time. It’s a very live, living, breathing question.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.

“Prayer for the French Republic” depicts several generations of the Benhamou family in Paris. The “present day” of the play is set in 2016, where violence and hate speech towards Jewish people is surging. Marcelle (Aidem) has a fulfilling life in the city and is at first incredulous at the thought of fleeing to Israel. But when her son is bloodied in the streets and her husband faces debilitating panic, Marcelle must ask herself to what lengths she will go to protect her family.

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Part of the satisfaction in playing Marcelle comes from the journey Aidem takes her on. At the beginning of the play she is staunchly opposed to relinquishing her home, but as the horrors of the world circle around her family, Marcelle surprises herself by choosing to move to Israel. “I found that the calmer I started and the more self-assured…that if I started in that place, I had nowhere to go but everywhere,” reveals Aidem. Marcelle is the deciding factor for the move, and as such must bear the emotional weight of holding her family’s fate in her hands. She credits Harmon and director David Cromer for helping her calibrate Marcelle’s change in world view in a realistic way. “They charted this so beautifully for me that it was really up to me to not get in the way,” she explains.

“I went really sensory with the whole thing,” says Aidem of her approach. She often excavated her own family history to get in the correct mindset for the play, imagining what it would have felt like when her ancestors were abducted in Poland around World War II. “It just made me feel an incredible sense of how fortunate and grateful I was to just get to tell this story,” remarks the actress.

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“Prayer for the French Republic” received two extensions due to popular demand, before finally finishing its run at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on March 3, 2024. Aidem has been involved with the show since its early workshop days, as far back as 2020, and appeared in the original Off-Broadway production. Letting go of a dynamic character like Marcelle has been hard. “I miss her so much,” she says, “She was a person that I felt like was both inside me and a friend. This strange thing happens to you that so much of you is in a character, but so much of that character is somebody you want to be. You get attached to these people even though many minds have imagined them, they feel palpable to you.”

Aidem was nominated for the Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics Circle Awards for the Off-Broadway iteration of “Prayer for the French Republic.” She won a Drama Desk Award for “Balm in Gilead.”

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