Concentration at Ruth Page Center for the Arts

On the eve of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), Concentration, Arne Weingart’s theatrical adaptation of his poetry, imagines a young poet in a World War II death camp, sharing his experience through 50 short poems voiced by four actors and serving as a kind of journal—an imagined response to all-too-real yet unthinkable events. The new, updated production features striking visual effects and original music by Cherise Leiter, performed live by four musicians: violin, cello, clarinet, and voice. Weingart said, “Concentration is a dramatic meditation on keeping oneself alive, body and soul, as though our uncertain past were able to speak with clarity and compassion to our uncertain present.”