Partisan

Author(s):

The play, written with the author's permission, is based on the memoir To Live and Fight Another Day by Bracha Weisbarth about her family's life in the Belarus forest. Warned that the ghetto would be liquidated the following morning, the mother found herself in a state of disbelief and virtual paralysis. Even if she and her three children could manage to escape unscathed, where would they go? All the able men in the ghetto were slave laborers in a logging camp. She was a city girl, unfamiliar with the woods outside their town. Her adolescent son made an impetuous decision that saved their lives.
Format: Full-length play, two acts
Character breakdown
Manya: a woman in her late thirties, the mother of three children
Kurtz: a middle-aged man
Benny: 13 years old
Shayna: 4-6 years old
Dina: 15 years old
Grandfather: a man in his late sixties, Manya’s father-in-law
Fedor: a peasant, Pyotr’s father
Ala
Pyotr: 15 years old
Papa (Herschl, Hershko): Manya’s husband and the father of their children
Kerylo: a Ukranian peasant
Basha: Kerylo’s wife
Benny: a middle-aged man
(Parts can be doubled, in some cases tripled. Several scenes can be performed with additional characters in non-speaking parts.)

Snapshot

Original or Prominent Production: Kushner Academy; United Jewish Federation MetroWest NJ.
Original Source Material: To Live and Fight Another Day by Bracha Weisbarth.
Nationality of Author: |
Publisher:
Mazo Publishers, Jerusalem, 2004
Production Rights Holder:

Barbara Wind

Experience(s) Chronicled: | | | | | | | | | |