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Voices of Terezin is a multi-disciplinary arts and educational production at American University in March 2010. See detailed information on the production below, and please visit our website for more information!

VOICES OF TEREZIN—AN ARTISTIC TRIBUTE IN TWO PARTS
$15 General Admission; $10 AU Community and seniors; $5 students

Mar. 19–21, Abramson Family Recital Hall, Katzen Arts Center

Mar. 19 Performance with welcome and preface, followed by music talkback with Murray Sidlin, conductor of Defiant Requiem and Dean of Benjamin T. Rome School of Music at The Catholic University of America.

Mar. 21 Performance with welcome and preface, followed by talkback with playwright Zdenek Elias’ family members Kate and Dorothy Elias, facilitated by Pamela S. Nadell, Director of AU’s Jewish Studies program.

Part One: American University Chamber Singers Convery: Songs of Children
The AU Chamber Singers present Robert Convery’s poignant setting of nine poems authored by children interned at Terezin (Theresienstadt), a ghetto that served primarily as a gathering point for Jews destined to be shipped to Auschwitz death camp. Convery conceived the work as a story from beginning to end, a “reaction to where the child is, the rejection and the horror.” The distinct voice of the children of Terezin, heard through Convery’s beautiful and moving work for chorus, violin, viola, cello, and piano, was written “in memory of all children who perished in the Holocaust.”

Part Two: Smoke of Home
Written by Zdenek Elias and Jiri Stein, translated by Dorothy Elias
Prologue and epilogue by Barbara Korner
AU theatre students will present the North American premiere of this one-act historical drama, written in Terezin in 1943. Never performed in Terezin, the play nevertheless continued to live in the memories of the playwrights’ friends as part of the remarkable legacy of resilience and hope created by the inmates in that place of despair. Set during the Thirty Years War (another era of religious persecution with the seditious subtext of the destruction of Germany), the play explores issues of denial, loss, and longing for home. Presented with a contemporary prologue and epilogue for modern audiences.