Haven

The breaking point for Sara Kahn came one afternoon at The Public Theatre when she gave an audition with nobody else in the room but director Elizabeth Swados' dog. Coupled with the recent news that what would have been her first Broadway musical lost its backing, Kahn decided to leave a world where her most consistent work was singing and dancing about the joys of Scotch Tape and post-op wound care in trade shows and closed her voice to singing for good.

After a stint at Columbia University where she earned degrees in social work and public health, our heroine found herself performing stress management counseling for Wall Street victims of mergers and acquisitions, still dissatisfied with her lot.

"I was no hero. I was going to find something inside of myself." she says of her choice to change her life by spending two years in Bosnia, helping to develop programs to aid internally displaced children. Her experiences there with a young girl who was afraid to fall asleep because every time she closed her eyes it brought back images of seeing family members murdered, woven with her experiences back in the states working with survivors of war trauma from around the globe seeking asylum in America, form the basis for her eloquent, inspiring and ultimately optimistic musical solo play, Haven.

Sara Kahn

A West African soccer star who was forced to flee his homeland after wrongful imprisonment and torture, a sexually abused adolescent Sierra Leonean War survivor and an Afghani man living and working in America who was detained on September 12, 2001 (as well as the now adult Bosnian girl) have all permitted Ms. Kahn to tell their stories as she worked with them in their quest for the basic human right of a safe and decent place to live. (Albert Nguidjol, the soccer star,serves as artistic consultant.)

But Haven is not the somber horror story you might expect. Yes, there are sections that are devastating in the realization of the ugliness humans can stoop to, but there is also humor, joy and simple warmth. As directed by Padraic Lillis, Kahn is a funny, self-effacing actress with a calming voice and a knack for story telling. Her play seamlessly and realistically integrates music (Yes, she does sing again.) into the text (some American standards, world music and new songs by Marc Smollin and Kelly Dupuis) without ever allowing for applause. A particularly chilling moment is when a U.N. pamphlet on how to avoid land mines, the only reading material in a children's center, is sung to a lullaby melody.

In her work as Director of the Cross-Cultural Counseling Center of the International Institute of New Jersey, Kahn has told these stories many times, but mostly as a bland repetition of facts for the benefit of judges who would determine if her clients may be allowed to stay in this country. But Haven gives her the freedom to tell these stories as a musical theatre artist, emphasizing both the strength and fragility of the people who have touched her so greatly. And through Sara Kahn they will touch you as well.

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