Open Space Arts/Arts Judaica, in association with Her Story Theater, is currently presenting the Chicago premiere of The Berlin Diaries by Andrea Stolowitz. Starring Eliana Deckner-Glick and Artem Kreimer, it’s a must-see, complex and carefully stagecrafted gem. Deckner-Glick is determined, overwhelmed, touched by sadness, resilient- in a word, believable. Kreimer is nothing short of astonishing; in the various different roles, he morphs into German personae/Jewish personalities, incarnating endlessly, figuring out the clues.
Directed by Izadorius Tortuga, the play will run through January 5, 2025 on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2 pm at Open Space Arts at 1411 W. Wilson Ave., Chicago.
This is a powerful and original presentation of a painful exploration into the traumatic Holocaust history concealed in the author’s set of relatives. The unusual device of inhabiting 2 actors with more than a dozen characters, often trading/repeating lines, calls for thoughtful and strategic direction. It’s not necessary to delineate which character is which at every moment, but the extremely high-level use of accented language and dialectical nuance works effectively to unpack the story hidden in a grandfather’s diary. Descendants go across the world to Berlin to discover what happened to an entire extended family in Nazi Germany with the aid of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, the Israeli Shoa archives, and present-day German reparations organizations. As each piece of the story is uncovered, truths are revealed with deep and unsettling emotional impact.
As the characters explore their psyches and grow from out-of-touch distant relations to intimate friends, they and the audience participate in a deeply humane inquiry into the unknown/unknowable past, dig into secrets that have been covered over by assumptions, and explore the realities we bequeath to our children, our grandchildren, and carry forward into time. Stolowitz brilliantly weaves a saga of inheritance developed through geography, space and alternate realities, demonstrating how the loss of personal history can seem as immediately painful as torture; it can also be ameliorated through triumphant research, raising the dead for an instant from their uneasy beds.
This is vital drama; the actors come alive as numerous others in front of your eyes, even as their unburied ancestors step to the stage before us and vanish into the mists of tragedy. The play is very personal, highly intelligent, even ironically funny. The best tribute to vanished lives is to bring forth their images through storytelling, proving how the lost can be found, and the trauma of living kinless can be treated with the truth.
Kudos to Viscaya Wilson for set and graphic design, to Sean Smyth for sound design and music, to Gabe Seplow for lighting design and all the production/PR crew
Tickets $25.00 ($20 for seniors and students, $15 for OSA members). Tickets available at www.openspacearts.org
Splash Magazines
Be the first to comment