Tags: identity

Adam’s Daughter

This play describes the effects of the Holocaust on the next generation. Adam is a Holocaust survivor and famous scholar who finds it difficult to talk about his experiences in the camps. His daughter, Natalie, struggles to discover her own identity and must cope with the overpowering shadow of her family’s history.

And the Rat Laughed [צחוק של עכברוש]

An opera based on Nava Semel's novel And the Rat Laughed, composed by Ella Milch-Sheriff. When a child asks her grandmother about her childhood for a school paper, the grandmother tells her story for the first time. She was born in Poland, and was given by her parents to a peasant family so that they would keep her safe. The peasant family takes away her name and identity, forcing her to become Christian. They starve her, and the family's young boy rapes her. Her only companion is a rat she calls "Stash". After a year, she's given to the catholic priest to be killed as revenge for Jesus’ crucifixion. But the priest hides her in his church and helps her rebuild her crushed body and soul. In the year 2099, two researchers are studying the myth of a "girl and rat" who survived the Holocaust.

I Love You, I Love You Not

A teenager learns to accept and honor her Jewish heritage. Daisy is visiting her grandmother at her home. Daisy is unhappy with herself and and her family life. Her grandmother provides her with emotional stability by providing her with grandmotherly advice and support but, most importantly, by recounting her experiences in Auschwitz where she lost her two sisters.

The Man in the Glass Booth

The Man in the Glass Booth, by Robert Shaw who was a well-known actor and writer, is somewhat influenced by the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann. The lead character is Arthur Goldman, a very wealthy Jewish businessmen living in Manhattan in 1965. Israeli secret service agents kidnap him and transport him to Israel, put him in a bulletproof glass booth, and prosecute him, charging that Goldman is not a Jew, but in reality a significant Nazi war criminal, guilty of horrific genocidal crimes. The play has a shocking final dramatic twist.

The Milliner

A portrait of a group of people who are unwilling to give up Germany as their home, despite the Nazi threats. Wolfgang, a hat maker, is forced by others to flee Germany for England, leaving his mother behind, who refuses to go. Filled with love for his homeland, he is unable to accept that she has probably been interned in a death camp, and he staunchly refuses to give up his German identity in front of his new British neighbors. Wolfgang's struggle of adamant denial sheds light on the agony of losing the only home ones knows and loves.