Witness - Arlekin Players Theatre

WITNESS: Where Do Unwanted People Go?

Award-winning Arlekin Players Theatre will open its 2021-2022 season with WITNESS, a bold and complex new documentary theater piece that bears witness to the migratory experience of Jews today and throughout history. Based on interviews of Jewish people around the world conducted by the Arlekin company members, along with historical records and letters, this timely piece will tell a multiplicity of stories of migration, displacement, home and identity. This interactive digital transmedia production will allow audience members across the world to become immersed in these stories and to engage with them directly.

The piece is based, in part, on the 1939 voyage of the M.S. St. Louis, the ship that famously left Germany with over 900 Jews on board, seeking to escape the rise of the Nazi party. When they arrived at their destination, Cuba, they were turned away. Efforts to locate the refugees elsewhere in the Americas also failed. No one wanted them, and the ship was forced to return to Europe, where more than 250 would perish in concentration camps.

Director Igor Golyak's vision for WITNESS is an interactive theater experience that allows participating audience members to engage in the life experiences and stories of centuries of Jewish people migrating, fleeing persecution, seeking a home, and struggling to understand their identities across the broad Jewish diaspora: Where do unwanted people go? How are they part of a single culture if they don't share land, language, or life experience? How do they survive? Thrive?

Many thanks to our informational sponsor, Jewish Parent Academy.

Upon receiving a link (a few days before the show) ticket purchase is no longer refundable.

Registration for the Witness - Arlekin Players Theatre program closed.

If you have any questions, please address them to Sasha via email jookender@gmail.com