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Boca Raton Theatre, Drama, Faye Sholiton, Genie Croft, Harriet Oser, Holocaust, Patti Gardner, Shoah, The Interview, The Women's Theatre Project, theatre, Willow Theatre
Powerful Memories… Powerful Theatre…
The Interview
by Faye Sholiton
“We awakened a lot of memories,” the interviewer tells her subject.
“They were never asleep,” the survivor replies.
The Interview, The Women’s Theatre Project’s second production in their new venue, The Willow Theatre in Sugar Sand Park, will open on January 4th, 2013 and run through January 20th. The Interview will be The Women’s Theatre Project’s 30th production since they were founded in 2002.
Faye Sholiton’s deeply moving memory play about the legacy of human suffering, courage and humanity, mothers and daughters, and forgiving and being forgiven, The Interview is at once a powerful documentation of a horrific historical event and one artist’s deeply felt response to it. Written with clarity and feeling, it resonates on all levels.
“It is so meaningful to bring this fine piece of theatre to life,” says the Women’s Theatre Project’s Artistic Director and the play’s director, Genie Croft. “We are all born into some story that affects our emotional, social and spiritual growth,” she continues. “The Interview explores the case of children of Holocaust survivors – and that can be an enormous legacy, a stifled mystery, or a complex gift and burden. It’s exciting to focus on the characters’ evolution as they reveal their intense feelings, traumas, and even dark humor, in terms of individual perception, and communication.”
Harriet Oser will play Bracha Weissman, who has transformed herself into an emotional recluse – her identity defined by the loss of her family in the Nazi death camps she miraculously survived. Performing The Interview, particularly for the children of Holocaust survivors and sharing their memories was an unforgettable experience for Oser, who is looking forward to revisiting the character, whom she played in The Women’s Theatre Project’s 2009 production of the play.
Patti Gardner will once again take on the role of Ann Meshenberg, who arrives one day to record Bracha’s testimony for a video archive. Ann, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, has her own agenda: the need to ask a stranger what she could not ask her parents.
Irene Adjan will play Bracha’s daughter Rifka, and Christopher Mitchell will take on the role of videographer Chris MacDonald.
Playwright Faye Sholiton has developed her work in the Cleveland Play House Playwrights’ Unit since 1996 and in Dobama Theatre’s Playwrights’ Gym since 2009. Her full-length works have been read or produced in more than three dozen venues worldwide and have won more than 20 national honors. She is a four-time winner of Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council. Prior to writing plays, she was an award-winning journalist for local, regional and national publications. A teacher of playwriting workshops, most recently she was the Cleveland Play House Artist-in-Residence at Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights. She has also taught scene writing to passengers cruising the South Pacific. Professional affiliations include the Dramatists Guild, which she serves as Regional Representative for Ohio; the Association for Jewish Theatre; and the International Centre for Women Playwrights. She is founder of Interplay Jewish Theatre, a company that produces staged readings of Jewish themed works.
Faye Sholiton will attend the opening night performance of The Interview.
The Interview will run from January 4th through January 20th, 2013, with performances on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 pm, and on Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m.
The Willow Theatre at Sugar Sand Park is located at 300 South Military Trail in Boca Raton, just south of Palmetto Park Road. Tickets for The Interview are on sale now, and can be purchased at the Willow Theatre Box office: 561-347-3948. Tickets for all performances are $25, or $20 if purchased before December 21st.
The Interview
By Faye Sholiton
January 4-20, 2013
Thu-Sat 8pm, Sat-Sun 2pm
The Willow Theatre at Sugar Sand Park
300 South Military Trail,
Boca Raton, FL 33486
Tickets: $25
Phone: 561-347-3948
www.womenstheatreproject.com
http://www.facebook.com/WomensTheatreProject
http://www.fayesplays.com/
Carol Kassie 