Tags: memoir

If This Is a Man (Se questo è un uomo: versionne drammatica)

This theatrical version of Primo Levi's autobiography, If This Is A Man (also known as Survival in Auschwitz) recounts his eleven months in Monowitz, one of three camps in the Auschwitz extermination center. Levi was transported to Auschwitz, following his arrest and internment in an Italian internment center for Jews, in February of 1944. He was liberated by the Russians in January of 1945.

Lost Childhood

A three-act, full-length opera based on Dr. Yehuda Nir’s memoir of his childhood hiding from the Nazis in Poland during World War II, and on conversations with Dr. Gottfried Wagner. When Nir’s father was arrested in 1941, Yehuda was eleven years old, and in order to survive, he, his mother, and his teenage sister moved from place to place disguised as Polish Catholics. In the opera, Yehuda’s character Judah Gruenfeld opens up after 50 years of silence to a colleague and psychiatrist, Manfred Geyer (portraying Dr. Wagner), a German born after World War II and the son of a prominent family of Nazi sympathizers. Manfred’s questions open the floodgates and memories come rushing back.

Metronome Ticking

Metronome Ticking is a docudrama based on the memoirs of a Jewish Holocaust survivor and the letters of a German propaganda officer during World War II who hated “Jews, Catholics, and Negroes.” Performed by their two sons, Bob Spitz and Henrik Eger, who exchange roles halfway through. Set during the Third Reich, the drama is brutally honest, yet uplifting. The experiences of an Austrian Holocaust survivor, fleeing across Europe, collide with the conflicting conscience and actions of a young Third Reich war correspondent in occupied France.

On the Other Side of the World

1939, Germany, as Hitler's army gains momentum, only one port remains open to thousands of fleeing Jewish refugees: Shanghai, China. Inspired by the memoirs of many, and told through the eyes of a fiercely resilient young woman. On The Other Side of the World tells the dramatic, incredible, and rarely told true story of a young girl, her family, and a community who sought shelter and survival in a country and culture unlike their own. A story of hope, love, survival and adventure.

Primo

Based on the memoir by Italian Jewish chemist and writer, Primo Levi, which describes his arrest as a member of the Italian anti-fascist resistance during World War II and his incarceration in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The play is a monologue told by an older Primo looking back at his life in Auschwitz.

The Secret Annex

Anne Frank has survived the war, and at age 25, she's ready to start a new chapter in New York City. Eager to publish a memoir of her time in hiding, Anne is sure it will launch her career as a writer. But when the only interested publisher demands drastic rewrites, Anne questions the meaning of her new life. Why did she survive, if not to share stories? In her compelling and provocative play, playwright Alix Sobler asks: Can the past be rewritten?

The Survivor

A group of daring Jewish teenagers smuggle food, other needed goods and later arms to the suffering Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. The play is based on survivor Jack Eisner's 1980 autobiography The Survivor.

To Steal a March on God

A play based on the author's 1976 interviews with Marek Edelman, the last living survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as well as on his 1945 memoir. The drama is structured in five sections, the opening and closing are set at a ceremony celebrating the anniversary of the famous ghetto revolt. The three other sections are based on the interviews with the survivor, now a doctor, and use flashbacks to recount the actions of the twenty-four-year-old resistance fighter.