Prime Stage Theatre Presents Two Holocaust Plays Of Hope And Healing

What made the murderous Terezin concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia uniquely sinister was its propaganda use as a "model" community showcasing Jewish artists, writers, composers and musicians forced to give performances and teach lessons to the thousands of children imprisoned with them.

Prime Stage Theatre tells the story of those children and one of their extraordinary teachers in Celeste Raspanti's I Never Saw Another Butterfly & The Terezin Promise running for seven shows Feb. 28-Mar. 9, 2025 at New Hazlett Theater, 6 Allegheny Square East, on Pittsburgh's Northside.

Directed by Prime Stage Theatre artistic director Wayne Brinda, I Never Saw Another Butterfly & The Terezin Promise is presented in partnership with Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum and Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh as part of the annual enGAGE Program using theatre to educate about the history and dangers of genocide.

Tickets for I Never Saw Another Butterfly & The Terezin Promise (adult $39, artist/educator $24, student $19) can be reserved online at https://ci.ovationtix.com/36406/production/1208645 or by calling (412) 320-4610 x10.

The cast includes Jackson Frazer, Eva Balodimas Friedlander, Molly Frontz, Sadie Karashin, Meredith Kocur, Arjun Kumar, Aaron Little, Holland Taylor and Aftyn Tomaceski.

"This year we are especially pleased to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of these camps and recognize the role of the liberators," says Brinda, a certified Holocaust educator and museum teaching fellow at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. "The troops who freed the prisoners were instrumental in preserving important historical documents."

I Never Saw Another Butterfly & The Terezin Promise portrays the efforts of Austrian artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis who taught children to make poems and drawings that told the true horrors of the camp.

Before she was taken away to be killed at Auschwitz, Dicker-Brandeis entrusted fellow Terezin tutor Raja Englanderova with two suitcases containing 4,500 poems and drawings. The artwork was saved and is now housed in the Jewish Museum in Prague.

"These plays are truly uplifting," notes Brinda. "We see Friedl's passion, the children's undaunted creativity and the irrepressible power of Art to bring hope and healing into the darkest hours of the Holocaust."

Since its founding in 1996, Prime Stage Theatre has presented over 100 plays that introduce student and family audiences to classic and contemporary works of world literature.

The theatre's current season concludes May 2-11 with Twelve Angry Men.

Prime Stage also presents a series of one-night performances titled Monday Night Specials. The May 5 evening will be a staged reading of a new play titled Freedom House: Giving Life a Second Chance on the birth of America's first EMS units in 1960s Pittsburgh.

To post a comment, you must register and login.