WARWICK — Audience members felt like they were “in the presence of Einstein,” Arts Council member Tom Wyatt said during George Capaccio’s one-man performance of Albert Einstein at a past Old Home Days.
That show was part one of Capaccio’s two-part story of Einstein’s life, which he will continue for this year’s Old Home Days at 7 p.m. Aug. 25 at the Warwick Town Hall.
Whereas part one, “Relatively Speaking,” told the story of the first part of Einstein’s life, focusing on the intellectual breakthroughs that led to the general theory of relativity, part two, “Reluctant Superstar,” focuses on the aspects of the character that drew Capaccio’s interest initially: Einstein’s political engagement in his later years.
“I thought I could use Albert Einstein’s humanism as a vehicle for me to talk about issues that are very near and dear to my heart,” Capaccio said.
The story picks up in the 1920s. Einstein, now known as a visionary physicist, is living in a Germany impoverished by World War I. The forces that eventually become Nazism are present.
“The whole period of the 1920s is fraught with danger for Jewish intellectuals,” Capaccio said. “I’m getting death threats. Nazis are threatening to cut my throat, and so forth.”
In the 1930s, realizing that Germany was no longer safe for himself and his family, Einstein comes to the United States and takes a job at Princeton University, where he is “appalled by the racism in this country.
“One of the causes that I am focused on, in addition to my scientific work at Princeton, is combating what I call the white man’s disease, which is racism,” Capaccio said.
Einstein’s political engagement increases over the years. He is put on multiple FBI lists as a subversive and a communist. Eventually, he takes public positions on global political issues, most notably on the use of the atomic bomb, which Capaccio’s Einstein discusses frankly.
“Part of the fiction that I offer audiences is to invite them to imagine that they are in my home in Princeton,” Capaccio said. “The year is 1948, and I’m used to having visitors who come over to the house. They may be students or tourists or just interested people, and I’m willing to sit and talk with them.”
Capaccio has been researching and developing the role since 2015. Walter Isaacson’s biography, “Einstein: His Life and Universe,” has informed the character’s personality, as have Einstein’s personal letters.
“I’m not there pretending to be Einstein, lecturing an audience on these (scientific) principles,” Capaccio said — although he does convey a coherent understanding of Einstein’s theories in his show. “I’m there as a person, as a three-dimensional human being that is Albert Einstein.
“I have created my own Einstein,” he said. “Other people have done Albert Einstein, and I’m sure that everybody brings their own character, their own background to the role, so I’m not by any means pretending to be Albert Einstein, because he was such a complex person. … It is an ongoing process. It is by no means finished. I continue to research and learn more.”