Producer Virginia Criste commissioned me to write the libretto for Signs of Life: A Tale of Terezin in 2000.At the time, my wife was pregnant. I had a production of Eliot Ness In Cleveland coming up at the Cleveland Playhouse, directed by David Esbjornson, and, immediately after, a production of Flight of the Lawnchair Man coming up at the Prince Music Theatre in Philadelphia, directed by Hal Prince. Meanwhile, the election of 2000, with all the ensuing recounts and hanging chads, went on.
It was a busy year. The research was daunting. I had stacks and stacks of books to read, videos to view, music to listen to (in a future blog entry I'll post a partial bibliography). And it was rough stuff. I was researching a ghetto (Theresienstadt, or Terezin) where the Nazis sent entire families, told them to create art, music and theatre for propaganda purposes, then sent them away to die in Auschwitz. The most powerful material for me was the artwork that survived, depicting life in Terezin in all its misery, but also in all its complexity, including, sometimes, joy. In particular, Bedrich Fritta's drawings to his son Tommy for his third birthday, were extraordinarily moving to me. At that time, I could only see them in a video, Terezin Diary.
I remember the project started to take shape for me over a long Thanksgiving weekend. My wife Michele and I were visiting her family in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Our return to New York was delayed by a massive snow storm. I hunkered down with some books and by the time the snow was cleared, I began to see how I might craft a libretto from this material.
I chose not to tell the story of any one historical personage. It felt wrong to do that, like stealing someone's life. But real people and real stories were the foundation of the libretto, in a fictionalized and theatricalized form.
I was planning on finishing the first draft in early February, 2001. But my son Alexander was born about a week earlier than his official due date. This threw off my schedule. I had everything worked out almost to the minute. But life, as always, had plans of its own.
About six weeks later, I emerged from my new father haze, and finished the libretto. Virginia expressed her enthusiasm for my efforts, and we set about finding a composer and a lyricist. At one point, I thought I might try to write the lyrics myself, but after making an effort to do so, I decided I much preferred to hoist that responsibility onto someone else.
First, Joel Derfner came on board as composer. Not long after, Joel and I met with Len Schiff. I remember after the meeting turning to Joel and saying, "you realize he's much smarter than either one of us." Joel agreed he was, and Len became our lyricist.
We spent the next several years writing, rewriting, reading, and workshopping the show. My second son Caleb was born during this period, and my wife and I became homeowners, moving to the Hudson Valley. Len and his wife, Jen, also had a son, Adam, and they also bought their own home. Joel published two books, Gay Haiku, and Swish, and he and his partner Mike also bought a house, in Brooklyn. We were all making a transition into adulthood and responsibility, while dealing with this most sobering subject matter, but also trying to maintain the childlike joy that brought us to the theatre in the first place.
Also during this period, we traveled to Prague and Terezin. This was an extraordinarily moving experience. We spoke to survivors of Terezin, walked the town, and saw a secret room in a now private home that the inmates of Terezin had painted with Jewish iconography so that the room might serve as a makeshift synagogue. Our terrific tour guide, Petra, grew up only a few miles from Terezin, but told us she never knew a thing about the place until after the Communist regime collapsed.
We learned so many stunning pieces of information that later came to inform our show or were incorporated into it. That secret room is referenced. So are the very useful presents that young boys would give to girls they liked.
One survivor told us about standing on a street corner in Prague after the war, and wondering how to go on, having lost her entire family and all of her friends. Our heroine, Lorelei, asks herself the same question at the end of Signs of Life.
In Prague, I finally was able to locate a book of Bedrich Fritta's drawing for his son Tommy. It was published as This is Not a Fairy Tale - it's Real. To Tommy for his third Birthday in Terezin, 22 January 1944. You can't find it on Amazon, but you can order it from the Jewish Museum of Prague. The version I've got has a "fairy tale" written to go alongside the original pictures and text. This "fairy tale" is not nearly as powerful as the original book Fritta wrote for his son. The book in something closer to its original form can be ordered from Yad Vashem.
Fritta hid the original manuscript behind a wall in Terezin. It was recovered after the war. There are many such stories about artwork in Terezin. In some cases, the art was recovered decades later. The secreting of drawings and their post-war recovery also plays a crucial role in our musical.
Fritta died in Auschwitz. His wife died in Terezin. Tommy, only four years old, spent months in the Little Fortress, the horrible prison the Nazis kept outside Terezin. Miraculously, he survived.
I remember crying my eyes out in a motel room outside Terezin as I poured through the pages of this book. Tommy Fritta, as drawn by his father, looks so much like my young son Alexander in some of the pictures. Alexander was himself not quite two at the time I sat in that motel room looking at those pictures. The thought of what Tommy had to endure, and the terror I felt knowing that in another place, in another time, my own Alexander could have been subjected to the same, was too much to bear. It's too much to bear even now. I'm not ashamed to admit that as I write these words, I can barely make out my computer screen through my tears.
Now, with Jeremy Dobrish directing, Signs of Life is set for an off-Broadway run in February and March, 2010.
It's been a long emotional journey. And it's been worth it, every step along the way.
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