FEBRUARY 3, 2012 AmERICAN JEWISH WORLD PAGE 9

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By JULIE KENDRICK

On a dark winter evening in Youth Performance Company’s rehearsal space, a group of young actors is re-hearsing the final scene of And a Child Shall Lead, the play about the children of the Terezin concentration camp. In the concluding moments of the play, Pavel, played by Harry Wendt, is told by a liberating Russian soldier that he is free, and he immediately moves to uncover the newspapers, poetry and drawings that he and his fellow prisoners have hidden in the barracks.

The moment is poignant and tragic. As Wendt walks off, a somber silence settles on the group.

The play’s director, Jacie Knight (also the artistic director of Youth Performance Company), suggests softly that this might be a good time for a short break. After a beat or two, the kids slowly pull themselves out of the long-ago barracks of Terezin and back into their acting company on University Avenue — sharing snacks, texting and talking, while Knight takes a moment to reflect on the deeper meaning of the show that will soon be presented to audiences.

Knight acknowledges that these young actors are tackling difficult subject matter.

“Remembering and honoring his-tory, as difficult as that can be, is absolutely necessary to understand where we’ve been and where we can choose to go,” she said. “Of course it’s hard to experience something so powerful, but this cast is up to the challenge, and I think audiences will be incredibly moved by the way they bring these historical figures to life.”

One of the cast members, Naveh Shavit-Lonstein, the son of Temple of Aaron’s Rabbi Alan Shavit-Lonstein, agrees with Knight’s assessment of the play’s impact. The 13-year-old actor is a seventh grader at Linwood Monroe Arts Plus.

Shavit-Lonstein plays Martin, a new arrival who brings along five suitcases and the expectation that Terezin will be as comfortable as his home has always been. The character’s unfolding horror in discovering the reality of daily life there, and his eventual tragic fate, have

sparked some serious thoughts for the young actor.

“I’m the only Jewish kid in the cast. I’m the go-to Jewish guy when they need to pronounce something in Hebrew,” he said with a laugh.

An experienced actor already, Shavit-Lonstein reports that this will be his 18th play in five years. But, he says, “I’ve never done a role this intense.”

The play has already had an impact on the rest of his family, too.

“My mom (Rebecca Shavit-Lon-stein) says she knows she’ll lose it when she sees me in costume with the ‘Jude’ star on my arm,” he said.

Reached at his home in New York City, playwright Michael Slade is thrilled to hear about the Minneapolis production.

“This play gets performed a lot, from a major production in Chicago last year and as far away as Australia,” he said. “It was even performed in Nuremberg, Germany.”

Slade says that the genesis of the play was a research trip to Czecho-slovakia. There, he saw original docu-ments and photos, what he describes as “this world of information.” Later, he was able to meet with six adults who were child survivors of Terezin.

“With this access came a great responsibility,” Slade said. “I think about these children fighting back in the best way that they could, by refusing to become invisible. Now, in places they could never imagine, their stories are being told and their words live on.”

The production itself is just part of a series of events and activities that Youth Performance Company has coordinated. In conjunction with World Without Genocide and its founder and executive director, Ellen Kennedy, an educational workshop will be presented on Saturday, Feb. 11. Kennedy will share her research on Terezin, particularly the story of Petr Ginz, a 14-year-old who was eventually killed at Auschwitz. Ginz, a gifted artist and writer, organized the members of his barracks to produce a weekly magazine.

The workshop will also feature local musicologist Rick Penning

talking about the many musicians who passed through Terezin, includ-ing Rafael Schaechter, who conducted fellow prisoners in performanc-es of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem.

Kennedy promises that the workshop, which will conclude with a light supper and attendance at that evening’s perfor-mance of the play, will be educational, inspiring and thought-provoking.

“The purpose of the workshop is not just to look back, but to look forward and understand the responsibility and opportunity each of us has to leave the legacy of a world without conflict,” she said.

An additional activity in conjunc-tion with the play will be participation in the Butterfly Project of the Houston Holocaust Museum, which is col-lecting 1.5 million paper butterflies decorated by kids to memorialize the 1.5 million Jewish children killed in the Holocaust. The play’s performance space at the Howard Conn Fine Arts Center will be the central collection point for this effort by many area synagogues and school groups. The butterflies will first decorate the theater and will then be shipped to the museum.

Back at the rehearsal space in the nights leading up to the production, Shavit-Lonstein says he appreciates director Knight’s caution to the cast that, unless they had experienced this horror firsthand, none of them, thankfully, will really understand what Terezin was truly like. And Knight herself, gathering the cast for another run-through, has one final thought about the production’s relevance to modern audiences.

“Throughout history, young people have been the agents of change,” she says, “and I think that this story, about these particular young people, has so much to say about the humanity of all of us.”

***Youth Performance Company

will present And a Child Shall Lead Feb. 9-26 at the Howard Conn Fine Arts Center (at Plymouth Congre-gational Church), 1900 Nicollet

Ave., Minneapolis. For tick-ets and information, visit: youthperformanceco.org.

The workshop, titled “The Holocaust: Spiritual and Cul-tural Resistance and the Ter-ezin Legacy,” will take place 3 to 9:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 11 at Plymouth Congregational Church. The cost is free for students, ages 15-18, and $20 for adults; to register, visit: www.worldwithoutgenocide.org/registerfeb11.

For information about the Butterfly Project of the Houston Holocaust Memorial, visit: hmh.org/ed_butterfly1.shtml.

Local teens perform And a Child Shall Lead and uncover the history of Terezin

Finding modern meaning in a classic Holocaust play

Courtesy of Youth Performance CompanyYouth Performance Company’s production of And a Child Shall Lead, which opens Feb. 9, explores what life was like for the children of the Terezin concentration camp.