See Anne Frank through the eyes of her friends and neighbors in the emotional theatre piece And Then They Came for Me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank, presented by CenterStage Acting Out.
Public performances are on Tuesday, November 10 at 6:30 p.m., and Sunday November 15 at 2 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center’s Linker Auditorium. The November 10 performance is also a special commemoration of Kristallnacht, or “The Night of Broken Glass.”
From Nov. 9 to 10, 1938, on the streets of Germany, the Nazis terrorized and slaughtered Jews, shattered windows of Jewish-owned stores, lit synagogues on fire and vandalized schools and homes.
It was a bloody, scorching and revelatory night for the Jews of Germany. There was no longer any question as to Hitler’s intentions for them. To honor and remember those who died and suffered on Kristallnacht, Adath Jeshurun’s Cantor David Lipp will sing Dachau Lied, aka Dachau Song, written in 1938 by Dachau prisoners playwright Jura Soyfer and composer Herbert Zipper.
Kristallnacht survivors will also be in attendance, making the evening even more memorable and poignant.
“To do a piece about the Holocaust on that night with Kristallnacht survivors that lived it will be powerful,” said CenterStage Artistic Director John Leffert.
Written by three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee James Still, And Then They Came for Me is part oral history, part dramatic action, part direct address and part remembrance. In this unique theatrical experience, actors use real interviews to tell the stories of the lives of three Jewish teenagers: Anne Frank, Ed Silverberg and Eva Geiringer (Schloss) during Nazi Germany’s Holocaust. Ed was Anne Frank’s first boyfriend, and she wrote about him in the beginning of her now-famous diary. Eva was the same age as Anne Frank and lived in the same apartment building in Amsterdam. Her family went into hiding the same day as the Frank family. And like the Frank family, they were betrayed. On Eva’s 15th birthday, her family was arrested by Nazis and sent to concentration camps. Eva and her mother survived, and after the war her mother married Otto Frank (Anne’s father).
CenterStage Acting Out is a professional touring children’s theatre troupe that travels to schools and community centers to present educational and relevant theatre to students of all grade levels. CenterStage Acting Out is supported by Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence, LEO Weekly, Highland Cleaners, Eventualities, the Jones Family Fund, The Marian Weisberg Youth Theatre Fund and the Kohn-Berman Endowment for the Arts.
Tickets for youth (grades 12 and under) are $7 and adults are $12. Call 502-459-0660 or visit www.CenterStageJCC.org/actingout to reserve tickets.
