Moisés Kaufman & Amanda Gronich Look Beyond the Frame in HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES

After acclaimed runs in New York, across the country and in London, Here There Are Blueberries is headed to Broadway this fall. Ahead of the production’s arrival, BroadwayWorld's Richard Ridge caught up with co-writers Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich to discuss the remarkable true story behind the play, its unusual theatrical form, and why they believe its questions resonate so strongly today.

The play began with the discovery of a mysterious album of photographs donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The images, unseen for decades, captured Nazi officers at Auschwitz not committing atrocities, but seemingly enjoying ordinary moments during their time off.

“When you looked at the photograph, it was like they could have been in a vacation resort anywhere in the world,” Kaufman explained. “If you didn't know what was happening outside the frame, that they were killing 1.1 million people, you would think, ‘Oh, these are just people having a nice relaxing time.’”

That unsettling disconnect became the starting point for a play that Gronich describes as much as a theatrical experience as a historical investigation. The photographs themselves become an integral part of the staging, surrounding the actors and pulling the audience into the investigation.

“The barrier between you and the album, you and the images, gets taken away,” Gronich said. “The actors are interacting with the images around them as though they're scene partners. And I think the audience begins to feel like they're walking through the pages of the album. That sort of luxury of distance goes away. And it's thrilling and it's terrifying and it's captivating.”

For Kaufman, that proximity ultimately turns the investigation back on the audience. Rather than simply examining the people captured in the photographs, Here There Are Blueberries asks theatergoers to consider how they themselves might respond when confronted with moral choices.

“What happens when you're looking at the play is that you begin to think, if I was in that position, what would I have done?” Kaufman said. “When do you take action? When do you not take action? When are you culpable? When are you complicit? And when are you complacent? And we all fall in that continuum.”

Now, the pair is eager for the Broadway engagement to bring those questions to an even wider audience. As Gronich put it, “We always say we want the audience coming in having one conversation and leaving having a very different conversation. And the fact that we're going to do this on a larger scale is thrilling.”

Watch the full interview with Kaufman and Gronich in this video.

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Here There Are Blueberries will open November 9 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.