Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 8, 2022

Back in 2008, Jordan Beck read a book of excerpts from the diaries of five Jewish teens who died in the Holocaust. One of the diarists, Anne Frank, is a name everyone knows, but Beck was surprised hed never heard of the other four.

Now, 14 years later, Beck is ready to launch Witnesses, a world premiere musical that gives voice to five lesser-known Jewish teen diarists and Holocaust victims. Over the years, he has recruited five different songwriting teams to tell each teens individual story in song, as well as Tony Award winner Robert L. Freedman to write the book for the 90-minute musical. It opens July 15 at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido.

Witnesses is the first original musical produced by 2-year-old CCAE Theatricals, of which Beck is managing producer and J. Scott Lapp is artistic director. Beck conceived the show and co-wrote some of its songs, and Lapp is the shows stage director.

While reading the 2008 book, Beck said he felt a personal connection to David Rabinowicz, who was 12 years old when he started his war diary in Poland in May 1942. He was sent to a Nazi labor camp two years later. Beck said he was struck by how David and the other teen diarists experienced many of the same issues that teens do today, but they also wrote about having to wear Jewish stars on their clothing, losing the right to ride public transportation and facing their very uncertain future.

Today, kids get so wrapped up with the little things and they feel like life is so tough. In this show, the kids are dealing with the same stresses in life, like crushes, not getting good grades and getting into arguments with their siblings and parents. But then on top of that theyre being marginalized. What I found so inspiring was that up until the point they stopped writing, they were still holding on to hope, Beck said.

A songwriter himself, Beck initially thought Witnesses would be a 15-song cycle, with three songs for each teen. In 2011, he told songwriter Adam Gwon about the concept, and Gwon wrote the shows title song We Will All Be Witnesses. Over the next several years, Beck acquired the musical rights for the diaries. Then he hand-picked composer friends whose writing and thematic tastes he thought were best suited to write the songs for each teen.

Beck wrote the lyrics and composer Gerald Sternbach the music for the songs based on Rabinowiczs diary. Gwon wrote the music and lyrics for Moshe Flinker, a Dutch Jew who was 18 when he died in the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. Matt Gould, whose musical Lempicka is now running at La Jolla Playhouse, wrote the music and lyrics for Yitskhok Rudashevski, who was 15 when he was shot to death in a Jewish ghetto in his native Lithuania in 1943. Composer Carmel Dean and lyricist Mindi Dickstein have collaborated on the songs for Romania-born va Heyman, who died in Auschwitz at age 13 in 1944. And Anna K. Jacobs wrote the songs for Renia Spiegel of Poland, who was 18 when she was executed by Nazi police who found her secret hiding place.

In 2021, Beck reached out to Freedman who won the 2014 Tony Award for the book of his Broadway musical A Gentlemans Guide to Love and Murder to ask if hed be interested in working on the project. Freedman agreed and created dialogue, monologues and ensemble moments from unused lines from the teens diaries.

What he did brilliantly is find all these little nuggets and gems from each of the diaries, a sentence here and there and weaved together dialogue, Beck said. Id compare it to (the musical) Assassins in how it takes the characters out of their time and place and has them interact. They had shared experiences but didnt know each other.

The show finally came together in a two-week workshop last fall in Escondido. To ensure authenticity, the creative team worked closely with Jewish consultant and historian Raymond Zachary as well as Natalie Iscovich, the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. Lapp said the workshop was a profound experience for everyone.

You always hope they are moved and respond in the fashion you hoped they would ... and when we ended one of the presentations of Witnesses, we had this overwhelming support of emotion and excitement and passion for the project that was incredibly rewarding, Lapp said.

Lapp said Witnesses may be about events that happened long ago, but the time to learn from them is now.

We have some real problems that have permeated into our society, Lapp said. We all know it and cant pretend that we dont. Its called hate. Its called bullying. Its called intolerance. Its called racism. Its called anti-Semitism. Throughout the course of the show, the audience will be posed with a question: What will you do? It is these lessons that we should walk away from the theater thinking about. We are all witnesses.

When: Opens July 15 and runs through July 30. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays

Where: California Center for the Arts, Escondido, 340 N. Escondido Blvd., Escondido

Tickets: $35-$75

Phone: (800) 988-4253

Online: artcenter.org

See more here:

CCAE Theatricals to premiere musical about 5 Jewish teen diarists who perished in the Holocaust - The San Diego Union-Tribune

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