A Message from Arnold Mittelman After a career in not-for-profit and commercial theater spanning more than 40 years I was honored in 2007 to found the National Jewish Theater / Foundation and in 2010 to assume leadership of its Holocaust Theater International...
2.5 Minute Ride
Author(s): Lisa Kron
2.5 Minute Ride is about author Lisa Kron’s relationship with her father, Walter, a German-Jewish Holocaust survivor who escaped Germany by Kindertransport in 1937 when he was 15 years old. The play recounts anecdotes of Kron family life: a grandmother with a house full of cosmetics because she felt sorry for the Avon lady; a brother who has to resort to looking for a Jewish wife on the internet; and her father who insists on an annual family trip to an amusement park in Ohio. But it’s a trip to Auschwitz Lisa takes with her ailing father that helps her better understand Walter’s personal history. Switching from the amusement park to the concentration camp, the play portrays Lisa Kron’s belief that “humor and horror are flipsides of the same coin.”
Format: Full-length comedy/drama
Cast Size:1F
Running Time: 70 minutes
Notes:
The play has received an OBIE Award, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations, L.A. Drama-Logue and GLAAD Media Awards and was named the best autobiographical show of 1999 by New York Press.
Snapshot
Original or Prominent Production:
La Jolla Playhouse, 1996; Public Theater, New York, 1999; toured extensively to theaters including the American Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage, the London Barbican and Theater Company Rinkogun in Japan.
La Jolla Playhouse, 1996; Public Theater, New York, 1999; toured extensively to theaters including the American Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage, the London Barbican and Theater Company Rinkogun in Japan.
Original Source Material: Autobiographic
Nationality of Author: U.S.
Original Language: English
Publisher:
Production Rights Holder:
Dramatic Publishing, U.S. and Canada only
Experience(s) Chronicled: Survivors and Subsequent Generations
HTC Insights
Views, reference and research of interest.
Lifetime Achievement Award
The National Jewish Theater Foundation presented its 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award to Alfred Uhry. The presentation took place as part of the Lincoln Center Library event on January 27th 2025 in commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on the 80th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz
Lifetime Achievement Award
On September 30, 2024, French playwright, Mr. Jean Claude Grumberg received the Lifetime Achievement Award. It was presented by NJTF HTII President, Arnold Mittelman with Dominique Trimbur, PhD-Manager for the History of Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, Teaching of the Holocaust of Fondation Pour La Memoir de la Shoah Project.