Number the Stars

Based on Lois Lowry's Newberry Award winning children's book, the play dramatizes how a Danish Lutheran family risks their own well-being by hiding Jewish friends and helping them escape to Sweden during the Nazi occupation. At the center of the play is Annemarie Johansen, whose family aids the Jews, and her best friend, Ellen Rosen, who is Jewish. Annemarie also becomes a heroic figure who outwits the Nazis and helps the resistance. The play closes a year later following the Nazi defeat and with the revelation that Ellen's brother died in a battle between Nazis and resistance fighters.

Format: Drama

Cast Size:7M/7F

Running Time: 80 minutes

Notes:

For additional reading, see Gene A. Plunka Staging Holocaust Resistance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 68–76.

Original or Prominent Production:
Grand View College, Des Moines, Iowa, September 1996; North End Players, Portland, 2014.

Original Source Material: Book by Lois Lowry

Original Language: English

Publisher:

Dramatic Publishing

Production Rights Holder:

Dramatic Publishing

Experience(s) Chronicled: Escape | Resistance | Righteous Gentiles