Questions of what is hidden and what can be revealed are often deeply imbedded in the interactions between survivors and their descendants.

I wrote the play Seeing Red to explore this dynamic.

The play employs magical realism, ritual, fairy tale, and testimony to tell a narrative of three generations of women haunted by the Holocaust.

The core of the play is a coming of age tale, centered around 13-year-old Rory, or “Red” as her grandmother calls her.

The audience is invited to journey through the liminal spaces of three different forests as Red, her mother Lotte, and her Holocaust survivor grandmother Alma explore what is hidden and what can be revealed. The first forest is in Poland, where Alma walks away from Auschwitz and hides. Second is the forest in front of the diner from which the Wolf (Zev) emerges. Finally, there is the forest between Grandmother and Granddaughter’s house where the story of Red Riding Hood plays out at Rory’s Bat Mitzvah.

The play moves through time in a cyclical fashion, shifting from 1940s Poland to 1990s New Jersey. The audience is gently exposed to Holocaust history while exploring the formation of Jewish identity.

Seeing Red began as a poem with a backstory. The backstory grew until it became a one act play with a running time of an hour. There was just so much to explore.

The play had its premiere with a staged reading on Zoom on August 16, hosted by Teach the Shoah. The cast included people I knew from online classes, friends of friends, and TTS storyteller Amy Faust Mayer.

Each actor had a script and a meeting with me to brainstorm how to play their character, but the cast did not have a chance to rehearse together. The actors met each other for the first time on screen at the performance.

I was thrilled with the outcome, and the response. “What a creative telling –  vivid and different from any other Holocaust experience I have ever had,” one audience member said.

“I was wondering how a theater experience would work on Zoom, and it was amazing!” said another.

If you missed it, you can find the recording here: Seeing Red – A staged reading of an original one act play by Cantor Karen Webber.