Signs of Life: A Tale of Terezin Part Two: Origins

In 1998, I was one of three playwrights (along with Alice Tuan and Carlos Murillo) commissioned to write one-person plays for the En Garde Arts production A SECRET HISTORY OF THE LOWER EAST SIDE, performed on the rooftop of Seaward Park High School. En Garde Arts, for those of you who weren't around in NYC in the 1990s, was one of the most important, and exciting, theatre companies in the city at that time. They were famous for creating "site-specific" theatre works, in warehouses, street corners, abandoned theatres, and pretty much anywhere else that could accommodate (not always comfortably) actors and an audience. I loved working with them. Writing a play to be performed outside of an actual theatre put me in touch in an exciting and eye-opening way with the essence of the theatrical experience: actor, audience, space, and language. Plus, they were great people to work with.

In 1997, En Garde Arts had produced a show, Sweet Theresienstadt, in Prague. Theresienstadt was the Czech town designated as "Hitler's City for the Jews." Thesresienstadt, or Terezin as it is known to the Czech people, became a repository for "Jewish Prominenten:" Europe's most prominent Jewish intellectuals, war heroes, artists, musicians, actors, composers and well-to-do. The Nazis permitted the Jews of Terezin to create visual art, operas, cabarets, and symphonies. They showed off the ghetto to the Red Cross, and made a propaganda film (The Führer Gives the Jews a City), all designed to fool the world into thinking that Hitler's intentions for European Jewry were benign. In reality, the camp was overcrowded and disease-ridden. The inmates were undernourished, and the transports east to the Auschwitz death camp were frequent. More than 140,000 Jews passed through Terezin. More than 100,000 perished, including over 10,000 children.

For various legal reasons, En Garde Arts was unable to bring Sweet Theresienstadt to the US. Anne Hamburger, founder and Executive Producer of En Garde Arts, remained intrigued by the subject matter, however. She approached me about writing the libretto to a brand-new musical theatre piece on the same subject. Since I hadn't seen Sweet Theresienstadt (which hadn't been translated into English), I felt I could approach the subject from a fresh and original perspective.

Aside from the obvious dramatic potential, and the challenge of helping to bring to theatre-goers this lesser-known episode in the history of the Shoah, the subject intrigued me for another reason. Some of my own family had been sent to Terezin, including my great-great uncle, Joseph De Leeuw, along with his wife and his daughter, Lucy. Of the three, only Lucy survived the war.

Anne and I had several meetings with a composer/lyricist team, and the project looked good to go.

And then En Garde Arts shut down. As it turned out, SECRET HISTORY was to be the final En Garde Arts production. Anne assured me this wasn't my fault; the decision to shut down the company had nothing to do with SECRET HISTORY, which met box office expectations. I was relieved to know I had not done to En Garde Arts what Michael Cimino had done to United Artists.

Anne Hamburger went on to become the Artistic Director of La Jolla Playhouse, where she helped bring the original productions of both Thoroughly Modern Millie and Spring Awakening to the the stage. She followed this up with an eight-year stint as Executive Vice President of Walt Disney Creative Entertainment, and recently founded her own production company, Big Heart Theatrical.

I went on to re-write the libretto to my musical, ELIOT NESS IN CLEVELAND, previously produced at the Directors Company in NYC and at the Denver Center Theatre Company, and subsequently produced at the Cleveland Playhouse, under the direction of David Esbjornson. I also wrote the libretto for FLIGHT OF THE LAWNCHAIR MAN, which was then directed by Harold Prince at both the Prince Music Theatre in Philadelphia and the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, and then later directed by Lynne Taylor-Corbett at Goodspeed Musicals and 37 Arts in NYC.

Most importantly, during Michael J. Fox's farewell episode of Spin City, my wife, Michele, emerged from the bathroom waving an EPT stick and informed me that she was pregnant with our first child.

But the subject of Terezin wasn't finished with me, just yet.

As it turned out, Virginia Criste, a lawyer from California, had also been interested in producing a musical theatre piece about Terezin. Her own grandparents were sent to a death camp on one of the final transports from Terezin, and she had been traveling to Prague and Terezin even before the collapse of the Communist regime to research the subject. Virginia and Anne Hamburger had discussed co-producing the American premiere of Sweet Theresienstadt. When that production never happened, they too went their separate ways. But when Virginia decided to commission and produce a musical theatre piece set in Terezin on her own, she asked Anne to recommend a writer.

Anne, ever generous to emerging talent -- and also a woman of considerable taste and fine artistic judgment (he said humbly) -- recommended me.

Stay tuned for: "SIGNS OF LIFE: A Tale of Terezin Part Three: Origins, Chapter Two."

Click here or more info on the upcoming production of SIGNS OF LIFE: A Tale of Terezin.

Click here for more info on the history and development of SIGNS OF LIFE: A Tale of Terezin.

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