Artists Repertory Theatre Announces Virtual Release Party of THE BERLIN DIARIES

Artists Repertory Theatre Mercury company will present Lacroute Playwright - in- Residence and three time Oregon Book Award winning playwright Andrea Stolowitz's "The Berlin Diaries". The Berlin Diaries is the autobiographical story of Andreas's quest to untangle her family's history using her German Jewish great grandfathers diary that was kept for his descendants after escaping to New York City in 1939. Directed by ART Artistic Director, Dámaso Rodriguez.

Following the complicated lure of genealogy, Andrea Stolowitz goes back to Berlin to bring the story of her unknown ancestors out of the archives into the light. The record keeps as many secrets as it shares; how do people become verschollen, lost, like library books? In this complex, contemporary drama about the search for home, fragmented heritage and Jewish diaspora, two performers scintillate between characters and locations at the border of reality and memory and the intersection of national history and private lives.

Playwright Andrea Stolowitz shares:

I was driven to write The Berlin Diaries because I always wondered, as the character of Andrea wonders in the play, "why my family is so small and why of the ones we have, no one gets along". Answering that question required me to go deep into my great- grandfather's diary which resides in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive, complete interviews with long estranged and contentious family members, and spend a year in Berlin, Germany visiting places mentioned in the diary and hunting down documents, archives, and people. The end result is a deeply personal and specific play about displacement and assimilation.

In the presence of the largest world-wide refugee crisis since World War II and the upsurge of hate crimes and xenophobia, the play asks us to experience what has happened in a similar past in order to influence the future. As Berlin Diary states as its end line, "the past, is the present, is the future".

DETAILS:

WHEN: Sunday January 24th. 6pm EST. "Doors open" at 5:30pm EST.

TICKETS : $20
https://artistsrep.org/performance/berlin-diaries-audio-drama/

Run Time: 90 minutes with no intermission. Post show talkback with director Dámaso Rodriguez and Playwright Andrea Stolowitz.

The Berlin Diaries Audio Play will become available to the general public starting on Monday January 25th and open ended

ART received support from the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education (OJMCHE) on their supplemental material and podcast. Wednesday January 27th, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

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