Benefit preview performances of "Why We Laugh"

Benefit preview performances of Why We Laugh:  A Terezín Cabaret

June 2 (St. Paul) and June 5 (Minneapolis), 2011

PLEASE NOTE:  

The June 5 performance is now taking place at the Loring Theater

(see details below)

by Kira Obolensky

director Hayley Finn, composer Craig Harris, translator and dramaturg Lisa Peschel

featuring Julie Kurtz, Elise Langer, Ryan Lindberg and Skyler Nowinski

based on an original cabaret by

Felix Porges, Vítězslav Horpatzky, Pavel Weisskopf and Pavel Stránský

Why We Laugh is a new adaptation of Laugh With Us!, a cabaret written and performed in 1944 in the World War II Jewish Ghetto at Terezín, just 40 miles northwest of Prague. The cabaret, complete with its original sheet music, came to light in the spring of 2005 in two separate family archives.  The original cabaret is set in a postwar Prague identical to the beloved city the Czech Jews remembered from the late 1930s.  In playwright Kira Obolensky's new adaptation, characters based on the original Terezín performers encounter "the scholar," a theater historian from our present.  As the performers look forward to the postwar future and the scholar looks back toward their past, they confront each other with difficult questions:  why did the Terezín prisoners laugh, and what does that laughter mean to us today?  

If you would like to support us but can't attend the benefit performances, please see: 

http://givemn.razoo.com/story/Why-We-Laugh 

For more information on our performances in the Czech Republic please see:

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/pesc0029/lisapeschel/why-we-laugh.html

Benefit performances:

Thursday, June 2 at 7:30 pm

The C.S.P.S. Sokol Hall

383 Michigan Street

St. Paul, Minnesota 55102

Sunday, June 5 at 7:00 pm

The Loring Theater

1407 Nicollet Avenue South

Minneapolis, MN 55403

Suggested donation $25; additional contributions welcome!

For reservations please call 917-397-6345.