I Never Saw Another Butterfly at Sacramento Theatre Company

Performed by students from STC School of the Arts, Young Professionals Conservatory, this beautiful and moving play written by Celeste Raspanti is based on the poetry created in a concentration camp by the Jewish children of Prague. Over 15,000 Jewish children passed through Terezin, and only about a hundred were still alive when Terezin was liberated at the end of the war. One of the survivors, Raja, having lived through it all, teaching the children when there was nothing to teach with, helping to give them hope when there was little enough reason for hope, creating a little world of laughter, of flowers and butterflies behind the barbed wire, tells the true story of the children. Its her play and its theirs. There were no butterflies at Terezin, of course, but for the children, butterflies became a symbol of defiance, making it possible for them to live on and play happily while waiting to be transported.