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...
Tempesta
Inspired by Mary Berg’s account of life and death in the Warsaw Ghetto, as well as drawing parallels with Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the production recreates life in the ghetto through the eyes of Prospero and Miranda. Craftsmen work, children learn the Torah at school, a family prepares for a wedding. Gradually Nazi persecution emerges. The people rebel but they cannot escape deportation to the extermination camps. In the final scene, a choir sings as paper blackbirds fly over the heads of spectators, representing those who were lost.
Format: Street theatre
Snapshot
Original or Prominent Production:
1997—the production appeared in five countries as street theatre.
1997—the production appeared in five countries as street theatre.
Original Source Material: Mary Berg’s diary was serialized in American newspapers in 1944 and published as a book, Warsaw Ghetto: A Diary, in 1945. Berg wrote her firsthand account of life in the Warsaw Ghetto while interned there as a teenager from 1940 to 1943. She and her family were able to escape deportation to the extermination camps due to the fact that her mother possessed dual Polish-American citizenship. After being moved around Europe with other prisoners of war, the family finally sailed to the U.S. as part of a German prisoner exchange.
Nationality of Author: Italian
Original Language: Italian
Production Rights Holder:
Visit the Teatro Nucleo website.
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.