Dreams of Beating Time

Dreams of Beating Time is set between 1917 and 1944 in Theresienstadt (Terezín, the model camp where theatre artists and musicians were allowed to produce artistic works but eventually transported to Auschwitz), Czechoslovakia, southern Germany, Mannheim, Berlin, New York and London. The scenes are structured like dreams and recollections loosely based on actual characters and events. Among the characters in the play are Kurt Singer, the former head of the Judischer Kulturbund in the Third Reich, an organization that had been allowed to produce theatre for Jewish audiences under Nazi supervision; Kurt Gerron, a Jewish director the Nazis wanted to use to make a propaganda film in Theresienstadt; Raphael Schachter, a conductor interned in Theresienstadt, and Wilhelm Fürtwängler, the controversial conductor who did not leave Nazi Germany.