Workshop: "Laugh with Us"

"Laugh with Us" by Kira Obolensky
Workshop presentation:  Monday, December 13, 7 pm
Playwrights' Center, 2301 East Franklin Avenue, Minneapolis

 For more information:   www.pwcenter.org/events.php?pid=1188

A page from the original script, preserved by co-author Felix Porges.

On December 13, 2010, actors directed by Haley Finn will present scenes from a script in development:  Kira Obolensky's new adaption of the Terezín cabaret "Laugh with Us." 

In the World War II Jewish Ghetto at Terezín (in German, Theresienstadt), four young Czech Jews wrote a cabaret that expressed the absurdities of their present, their yearning for the world of their past, and above all their hopes for a postwar future in Prague.  Kira Obolensky's  adaptation reveals the dark humor and many inside jokes embedded in the cabaret and brings us face to face with the Terezín performers -- and with "the scholar" who longs to reach them across time and space.

In a five-day workshop supported by Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council, Kira, director Haley Finn and I as dramaturg will work with actors Elise Langer, Emily Gunyou Halaas, Sasha Andreev and Pearce Bunting, composer Craig Harris and company manager Ryan Ripley to develop several scenes from the adaptation. On Monday, December 13, we'll present them for your feedback. Please come and share your opinion during the first stage of a project that is already drawing international attention.