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"Poignant, vivid, gripping
without being horrific...Stuns the audience with the power of original
words...Deeply personal...Brings to life onstage a real family...
A haunting tale...A true masterpiece...An amazing piece of work."
NEW!!!...NOW AVAILABLE AS A FULL SCRIPT FOR THEATRE PRODUCTIONS
No
Way Out as a full play is ideal for regional, community and university theatres. A cast of 6 or 7, a unit
set, minimal props, limited memorization and simple costuming make the play manageable to produce. A
CD of a computer-generated slide show (47 images) of authentic old photographs, letters, and documents
is included, creating a dynamic multi-media experience. The use of the CD images is entirely optional,
however, and the storyline will not be compromised if they are omitted. By design, dialogue among
characters only occurs via letters in order to maintain the authenticity of what actually transpired. No
Way Out is a play that not only uses letters to tell a story but a play in which the letters are also a part of the
story.
Making the Holocaust intensely personal and intimate, No Way Out is the true story of my family and their
desperate attempts to escape Germany in the face of the Nazi's well-planned and progressive anti-
Semitism. The play unfolds on stage through the actual letters written among my mother's German Jewish
family from 1938-1946. Through their own letters, at once ordinary and extraordinary, we learn the little
known story of how difficult it was for Jews to get out of Germany and find a haven elsewhere. In 1939,
before I was born, my parents, two uncles and eventually my grandparents, Stefan and Frieda Deutsch,
emigrated from Germany leaving only my aunt Gerda and her new wealthy husband, Heinz Schottlaender
behind. The story centers on Gerda and Heinz, the young optimistic couple stranded and isolated in their
own country and Stefan and Frieda, Gerda's parents, who struggle from afar to save their daughter and
her family. In the beginning, the couple did not rush to leave, feeling protected by Heinz's fortune. But as
Hitler increased his War against the Jews and his War against the World, they too frantically searched for
a way out. The audience shares the intense, ever changing and unimaginable events, and even the
everyday joys, of a family torn apart yet held close through their only means of communication; their
letters. The audience comes to understand the incessant bureaucratic red tape, false promises,
deception, world-wide apathy, greed, increasing persecution and mounting daily hardships that delayed
emigration and immigration. Surprisingly, the audience also sees a family able to remain hopeful, human
and loving through it all.
No Way Out
is also available for school use as No Way Out Readers Theatre and No Way Out: Letters
and Lessons of the Holocaust, a Teaching Curriculum at
www.socialstudies.com.
It is also available as a short story with a teacher's guide in The Call of Memory: Learning About
the Holocaust Through Narrative, An Anthology and Teachers' Guide by Karen Shawn, Keren Goldfrad and
William Younglove, editors, available at
www.callofmemory.com,
www.socialstudies.com and
www.amazon.com,
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