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| From 1942 to 1945 over 15,000 Jewish children passed through Terezin, a former military garrison set up as a ghetto. It soon became a station, a stopping off place, for hundreds of thousands on their way to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. The play I Never Saw Another Butterfly by Celeste Raspanti was based on the writings and drawings of these children. A reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust is made especially poignant in this play because it concentrates on the fate of children at the hands of the Nazis. The playwright draws on the writings of children confined at Terezin. The story is told through a young Terezin survivor, Raja, who recalls the special efforts of a lady in the camp who insisted on holding classes, encouraging children to write and draw and make the best of what is at hand. Her philosophy was "To keep alive today." The presentation with its absorbing and tragic message is likely to remain long after curtain. |
| Cast List Raja Englanderova ...... Lindsay Kaplan Irena Synkova.............Pia Landano Honza ........................Ryan Wistreich Pavel .........................Kurt Mansperger Father.........................Rob Melnyk Mothe........................Tina Pisani Erika .........................Megan Botscheller Renka ........................Allyn Glassberg Irca ...........................Alyson Dodge Vera ...........................Lauren Romeo Rabbi .........................Paul McKinley Child I .......................Julia Pagones Child II ......................Mike Birmingham Child III......................Karen Zimmer Child IV......................Pietro Vitiritti Directer......................Jamie Walleck Art Producer...............Laura Mandaranno Overall Direction..........Mr. Scarrone |
| "He doesn't know the world at all, Who stays in his nest and doesn't go out. He doesn't know what birds know best, Nor what I want to sing about, That the world is full of loveliness." |
| I Never Saw Another Butterfly |
| On a Sunny Evening (written in 1944 by children of Terezin) On a purple sunshot evening under wideflow'ring chestnut trees, upon the thresholdfull of dust yesterday the days are all like these trees flower forth in beauty, lovely too their very wood all gnarled and old, that I am half afraid to peer into their crowns of green and gold. The sun has made a veil of gold so lovely that my body aches, above the heavens shriek with blue convinced I've smiled by some mistake. The world's a-bloom and wants to smile, I want to fly but where, how high? I want to fly. If in barbed wire things can bloom, why couldn't I? I will not die, I will not die. |
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| Lindsay, Jamie, Allison, Tina, and Julia (front and center) |
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