Elizabeth Swados to Discuss her Creation Sosua: Dare to Dream Together 3/6

On Sunday, March 6 at 2:30 p.m., the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust will present Sosua: Dare to Dance Together, a moving play based on monologues and songs written by NYC Dominican and Jewish teens. This performance highlights their connections to one another while interweaving the history of Jewish refugees escaping the Holocaust and finding sanctuary in the Dominican Republic. Following the performance, Elizabeth Swados, the creator and composer of the play, will discuss the work.

Tickets are $15, $12 students and seniors, and $10 for members. Tickets are available online at www.mjhnyc.org or by calling the Museum box office at 646.437.4202.

About the Play

The performance is the culmination of 10 months of collaborative work between 10 Jewish and 10 Dominican teens and Swados, who composed and directed the play last year. The 2011 version of the play will welcome new cast members who will help create new monologues and songs with this year's director, Matthew Robert Gehring, who will be working closely with Swados.

The performers' process of working together and learning about history is as important as the finished result. Original cast member Jordan Hoepelman said, "Now I know more about how the Jewish people suffered, and that the Dominicans saved them," he says. "It's been the greatest project I've ever done. I'm learning new things, making great friends, and working with a great director."
Victoria Neznansky, chief program officer at the Washington Heights Y, came up with the idea for the play after seeing Sosúa: A Refuge for Jews in the Dominican Republic, the popular exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in 2008. It was then that she realized the potential of the story to create a greater connection between the Dominican and Jewish communities.

Neznansky said, "This project will bring a sense of meaningful community ties and spirit that are needed to make a more vibrant and cohesive community."
Swados is also inspired by her work on Sosua, "They're wonderful kids with a real sense of responsibility and understanding of the horrors of what the world can do and how to heal it," she says. "In small groups like this, you can discuss the healing process. It gives me hope."
About Sosua

During the latter part of the 1930s, the Nazis were still allowing Jews to emigrate, but few countries were willing to take them in. But following the Evian Conference in 1938, where 32 nations met to discuss the refugee crisis, one nation - the Dominican Republic - welcomed the Jews. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee provided passage and ongoing support in order to establish a small refugee agricultural settlement at Sosúa, an abandoned banana plantation on the northeastern shore of the Dominican Republic. The settlers, with the help of their Dominican neighbors, began to cultivate the land and built a thriving town that still exists today.
While most of the Jews left Sosúa after the war to rebuild their lives in the United States or Israel, some families stayed in the Dominican Republic where they remain to this day. A still active synagogue and a Jewish museum stand as a testimony to the resilience of the Sosúa Jews and the humanity of their Dominican neighbors.
Sosúa: A Refuge for Jews in the Dominican Republic was on view at the Museum from February 17 through August 10. Created in cooperation with the Sosúa Jewish Museum, this bilingual exhibition (in English and Spanish) showed how settlers were recruited, how they came to Sosúa, what awaited them there, how the settlement grew, and the evolution of this small Jewish community.

About the Creative Team
Elizabeth Swados is best known for her Broadway and international smash hit Runaways. She has composed, written, and directed for over 30 years. Some of her works include the Obie Award winning Trilogy at La Mama, Alice at the Palace with Meryl Streep at the New York Shakespeare Theater Festival and Groundhog, which was optioned by Milos Forman for a film. Her work has been performed on Broadway, off-Broadway, at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music, Carnegie Hall, and locations all over the world. She has received five Tony nominations, three Obie Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Ford Grant, Helen Hayes Award, and others.
Matthew Robert Gehring is a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts where he studied at the Experimental Theater Wing. He writes, performs, and directs and is part of the sketch comedy troupe Tenured Faculty.
This production is made possible through the support of the Community Connections Committee, part of the New York Jewry Task Force of UJA-Federation's Commission on the Jewish People.

About the Museum of Jewish Heritage

The Museum's three-floor Core Exhibition educates people of all ages and backgrounds about the rich tapestry of Jewish life over the past century-before, during, and after the Holocaust. Special exhibitions include Project Mah Jongg, on view through February 27, 2011; Fire in My Heart: The Story of Hannah Senesh, on view through August 7, 2011; and The Morgenthaus: A Legacy of Service, on view through September 5, 2011. It is also home to the award-winning Keeping History Center, an interactive visitor experience, and Andy Goldsworthy's memorial Garden of Stones. The Museum offers visitors a vibrant public program schedule in its Edmond J. Safra Hall and receives general operating support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.