HOW TO LIVE To Have World Premiere At The 14th Street Y in January

Mindy Pfeffer's thought provoking new play HOW TO LIVE is slated to have its World Premiere at the 14th Street Y in the East Village in January 2023. The timely production is directed by Jean Randich and is part the 14th Street Y's LABA (A Laboratory for Jewish Culture), a NYC-based artist fellowship program for which Pfeffer was a part of in 2021. HOW TO LIVE runs January 25 - 29 with opening night scheduled for January 25.

Poland, 1941: a young Jewish girl watches in horror as her father is brutally beaten by German soldiers. He makes her swear to keep silent. The next day, he also chooses silence. He stops speaking and spends a year reading Shakespeare. Postwar, the girl, Maria Pfeffer Orwid, becomes one of Poland's leading psychiatrists and finds herself face to face with a man who worked as a doctor at Auschwitz - a man who believes that what he did to survive the war is unconscionable. How to Live is a meditation on grief, courage and in choosing life after insurmountable odds. Inspired by actual events.

The beginnings of the play started in 2011 when Pfeffer was in Poland teaching and performing puppetry and theatre with the organization NYC Kids Project. While in Krakow, she visited the Old Jewish Cemetery and saw Maria Pfeffer Orwid's grave. She knew very little about the history of the Pfeffer side of her family, other than they were immigrants who moved to Brooklyn. It was then a spark was born and she started to research Maria's story, a story that has stayed with her since. During the pandemic, Pfeffer took an online playwriting class with Marsha Norman and wrote the scene of Maria Orwid seeing her father being beaten by the Nazis, and at that point knew she had to write about Maria.

Pfeffer grew up knowing she wanted to be an actress and tell stories. "From a young age storytelling was a part of my life's fabric. My family told stories of every kind including those of my older relatives, growing up during and after WWII."

Pfeffer, who is a distant cousin to Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel on her maternal side, went on to share, "I had never met Mr. Wiesel. Growing up it was an interesting fact. I liked that I was related to someone famous, and that I knew some of the family history but it never really seemed tangible." She went on to say, "One of his books is dedicated to "Dodye Feig," a Hasidic rebbe (rabbi), his grandfather, my great-great grandfather. I read the book and dedication in college, and it struck me like a lightbulb! It made me realize that the stories Mr. Wiesel told were much more a part of me than I previously thought. My living, breathing relatives (including a great-aunt who survived Auschwitz) were connected to these stories in a way I could barely comprehend." She continued, "I started writing plays later in life and always knew I wanted to tell stories of the Holocaust. It didn't feel right, somehow, to tell my own family's story and then I saw Maria Pfeffer Orwid's grave. I still don't know if I'm related to her, but I hope to find out someday."

The cast features Christine Bruno (Public Servant/Off-Broadway), Danielle Delgado (Life Is A Dream (1677)/La MaMa), James Hallett (The Diary of Anne Frank/Broadway), and Jacqueline McCarthy (American Dynasty The DuPonts/Roku).

The creative team includes lighting design by Samuel J. Biondolillo, sound design by Robert Murphy, scenic and projection design by Sue Rees, costume design by Charles Schoonmaker.

How to Live runs January 25 - 29 with performances Wednesday - Saturday @ 7:30pm, and Sunday @ 2pm. Running time: 75 minutes. The Theater at the 14th Street Y is located at 344 East 14th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues), New York, NY 10003. Subway: L train to 1st Avenue. Tickets are $10 (students/seniors), general admission tickets are on a sliding scale between $18 - $36 and are available at https://tinyurl.com/9vnj4b36.

Mindy Pfeffer (playwright) is a playwright, solo performer, and teaching artist. She recently participated in the National Playwrights Symposium at Cape May Stage. Mindy's plays have been seen at theaters including HERE, the LAB Theatre, the Woodstock Fringe Festival, and on the Coney Island Boardwalk (!). Her solo show There's Iron in Your Future (about training for an Ironman triathlon) was seen at various Fringe Festivals, the Omega Institute, the New York Road Runners RUNCENTER, and IRT Theater in NYC. Mindy is a teaching artist-puppeteer with NYC Kids Project, writing and presenting puppet shows about respect and inclusion for NYC schoolchildren. She's received three New York State Council on the Arts Decentralization Grants for the creation of new work and, with NYC Kids Project, a Creative Learning Grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She holds a BFA in theatre from Syracuse University, trains with the Siti Company, and has studied playwriting with Eduardo Machado and Marsha Norman. Mindy is a member of Honor Roll! (an advocacy and action group of women+ playwrights over 40), the Dramatists Guild, and AEA. www.mindypearlpfeffer.com

Jean Randich (director) has been staging emerging work and new looks at classic plays and musicals for over thirty years. She was a winner of the NEA/TCG Director Fellowship and has served as the George Abbott Resident Director at New Dramatists. She was awarded a Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation grant to work with Page 73 on the musical The Unknown, presented at Joe's Pub. Together with Anna Maria Hong and Allen Shawn, Jean adapted Ms. Hong's novella "H & G," into a new work of music theater, and she directed the premiere production of H & G, a great and terrible story in Spring 2022. Her other directing work includes The Importance of Being Earnest (Connecticut Repertory Theatre), Antigone by Sophocles (NAATCO), Drawn to Death by Art Spiegelman and Phillip Johnston (St. Ann's, NYC), J.P. Morgan Saves the Nation by Jeffrey M. Jones and Jonathan Larson (En Garde Arts), and Dog and Wolf by Catherine Filloux (59E59 Theaters). Jean is Professor of Drama at Bennington College and a Faculty Member at NYU Tisch. She received a Masters in Creative Writing from Brown University and an MFA in Directing from the Yale School of Drama. www.jeanrandich.com

LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture is a program of the 14th Street Y that uses classic Jewish texts to inspire the creation of art, dialogue and study. Part of LABA is the House of Study, a NYC-based artist fellowship program in which approximately 10 culture-makers-a mix of visual artists, writers, dancers, musicians, actors and others-are brought together to study classic Jewish texts in a non-religious, open-minded setting. www.14streety.org/artsandculture/laba

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