Hello Fellow Kossacks:
Today I am writing another personal diary. And I am making no bones about
it, this is a diary about a project I am working on, an original play about
the holocaust.
This is just the first installment for this series I call: Come see this damn
play is you live any where close to Birmingham, Alabama. The tickets are only
$5 each, the high school is afraid to charge what the play is worth, which I think
is at least 20 bucks, but I can't do anything about that, just letting you know the
worth is greater than the price. ">
New School, New Stage, New Play
The most exciting moment for a director is when you get to direct the exact play you have been dreaming about for years. The classic that you want to plant your vision upon. Finally, the moment comes and it’s your interpretation.
Then something extraordinary happens. A brand new exciting project comes your way. A new play, a new playwright, a new high school with a sparkling multi-million dollar theatre department, replete with scene shop, costume storage, make-up and dressing rooms with private showers. The new theatre department even has a modest budget so we can build a set and complete the vision of premiering a new play on a new stage in a new school.
And the perfect play lands in your lap. A play of relevance, a play commensurate with college level material and quality. But the school is a high school, Mortimer Jordan High in Kimberly, Alabama. The play is The Muselmann, written by Jordan Alumnus Jeffery Dingler. Jeffery Dingler is a music teacher in the Birmingham area and has been writing creatively since he was sixteen. His output comprises a collection of poetry, a collection of short stories, a novella, and this play. The Muselmann was originally written as a one-act play when Jeffery was just seventeen, and inspired by the story of his grandfather, a camp survivor who was rescued by Raoul Wallenberg, the famous Swedish diplomat and humanitarian, during World War II. In 2005, the Muselmann went on to win the South Eastern Theater Conference’s Young Playwright Award, and has since been reedited for the stage at Mortimer Jordan High School.
The play takes place in the winter of 1944, a concentration camp in Poland. The weather has left a fresh blanket of pure snow on the ground and a chill in the air. These are the fading days of WWII—the Wehrmacht has been irrevocably cracked and left a reeling German army fleeing west toward the Fatherland; meanwhile the advancing Soviet counterpart gathers force and momentum every day. Three Holocaust survivors—Eli, Yaduik, and Zigny, a survivor on the verge of death (a muselmann)—have managed somehow to escape the madness of the concentration camp deportations and death marches and remain hidden inside their barrack. Too terrified to go outside, there the three of them wait for someone or something to come. The Muselmann is a gritty holocaust realism depicted through the narrow eyes of two survivors. At heart, the play is a horror-scape—a dialogue of symbols, images, remembrances and emotions that underscore the Holocaust’s themes of dehumanization, isolation, and absolute brutality. Embodying all these are the frail remnants of Zigny, silent throughout, that continue to haunt Eli and Yaduik, and remind them both of their fading humanity and their impending fate.
Holocaust plays are few and far between. As a child of a Holocaust survivor, the play has special meaning for me. My father was a survivor from Czechoslovakia and it deeply affected our family.
As a guest director at Mortimer Jordan I feel privileged to be working in this beautiful new space, with an exciting new play. The subject matter is thought-provoking and profound; bringing Holocaust awareness and education (on National Holocaust Remembrance Week, no less) into a community where many have never even heard the word Muselmann. My great hope is not only to create the holy stage magic that every director, actor, and techie strives for, but also to reach down into the audience’s soul and move them to tears, or perhaps even enlightenment.
So that's it for now. Flame me if you so desire, or ignore as usual, but never
under estimate the power of art, love, words, they can move mountains.
Until the next time fair readers, when I can include actual pictures of the set
and the actors.
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