The temptation for a writer following in Shakespeare’s history-play footsteps is to let history do the talking. But this is an abdication of responsibility. History supplies events, presents larger-than-life figures and provides plenty of endings, tragic and otherwise. But plots — the way events are organized around the actions and reactions of characters — are how playwrights create new meaning from old tales.

Tom Jacobson, a prolific local playwright who has been a mainstay of Los Angeles’ intimate theater scene, has written two new plays centering on 20th century European artists during the traumatic rise of Nazism and antisemitism in prewar Germany. But the playwright relies too heavily on the historical interest of the material: So busy chronicling what happened, he loses sight of his main task, creating autonomous dramas.