Video: RUTKA: A New Musical at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park First Look

Get a first look at RUTKA, a new indie-rock musical adapted from Rutka’s Notebook: A Voice from the Holocaust, making its world premiere at Ohio's Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park.

RUTKA features music and lyrics by recording artists Jocelyn Mackenzie and Jeremy Lloyd-Styles formerly of the Brooklyn-based indie-rock band Pearl and the Beard. Book is by award-winning playwright and multiple Emmy Award nominee Neena Beber (Executive Producer and Writer on “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”). The production is directed by Wendy C. Goldberg, the  former Artistic Director of The National Playwrights Conference at The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and a two-time Chair of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama jury

RUTKA is a contemporary rock musical based on the internationally acclaimed Rutka’s Notebook: A Voice from the Holocaust, a diary by 14-year-old Rutka Laskier. Rutka documented her thoughts and experiences during a three-month period in 1943 while living in the Jewish Ghetto in Bedzin, Poland. Her diary would remain hidden for 63 years until it was published in 2006. Following its relatively recent discovery and authentication by scholars, Rutka’s Notebook has drawn comparison to The Diary of Anne Frank. (In an odd coincidence, Rutka Laskier and Anne Frank were born on the same date: June 12, 1929).

Rutka’s world is consumed by the usual teen concerns, like friendships, gossip, a new haircut, and the flickers of first love — all of which she documents in her diary. But the world at large is far from usual. It’s 1943 in war-torn Poland, as Rutka and her friends are trying to live life as normally as possible while confined in the Jewish Ghetto. With their futures and fates uncertain, they reach for hope, resilience, and resistance.

The production of RUTKA at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park is presented by arrangement with Amy Langer and David Schwartz of Think System Productions,  Executive Producer Cody Lassen (Spring Awakening, Indecent, The Band’s Visit), and with the support of The Smart Family Foundation. General management is by KGM Theatrical.