The MTSU Theatre Department’s production of “Dear Finder,” a piece that melds actual accounts of Holocaust victims and survivors with the weight of historical facts, premieres tonight at 7:30 p.m.
“Dear Finder” presents the brutality of the Holocaust in an especially emotional performance by 14 students. The show is not for the particularly sensitive, as much of the material is graphic.
That’s not to say the presentation isn’t effective; it is simply difficult to describe without personally absorbing the show. Yet the players and crew meaningfully capture the narratives of a mere handful of the millions affected by this atrocity.
The result of their efforts will leave you reeling at not only the scale and context of this genocide, but questioning your own beliefs and moral fiber in a modern world still plagued by ethnic cleansing.
Director Jacqueline Springfield says that the play was chosen in part because of the concurrent Holocaust Studies Conference.
“I had [the cast] do research on the different survivors, the actual words that were taken from their diaries,” Springfield says. “So they did research on who the survivors were, who the members of the SS were that they are also playing.”
The play’s title is a reference to a letter found among several others inside a milk can, the play’s central image. Milk cans and tin boxes were buried underneath the streets of Warsaw during the rise of the ghettos along with human teeth.
The teeth exist as indisputable genetic evidence of Nazi Germany’s atrocious crimes, and the milk cans and tins were filled with documents ranging from wills to letters to obituaries to give firsthand accounts to the finders.
Along with the milk can, a large portion of the set, which is modeled after a concentration camp, comprises dirt actually taken from the practice football field. Cast members powerfully portray the act of Jewish men, women and children mercilessly forced to dig their own graves before being shot.
Even if you accept that what you are seeing is but synthesized, strictly seeing so many bodies hit the earth after hearing a gunshot delivers the fundamental message of destruction. Although it gives only a tiny glimpse into what life and death was like during the Holocaust, the lifelessness of various cast members is both palpable and jarring.
One specific scene meticulously recounts the massacre at Babi Yar, where approximately 30,000 Russian Jews were murdered over just two days, as well as tens of thousands more in the months that followed. Actress Elizabeth Williams gives the agonizing monologue of a Jewish woman while Stephanie Freeman and the rest of the cast pantomime the action. The unification will leave you speechless at the monstrosity that mankind can be at its worst.
“The way that it’s structured it’s abstract, it’s stylized within another moment that’s completely as real as you can get it,” Freeman says. “It’s been this great challenge to get to do this great opportunity. It’s been so much more than a play.”
The set itself comes alive with malevolence during scenes that take place in the concentration camp. As the lights dim and various cast members describe the utterly detestable conditions of the camps, you can almost smell the acrid odor of burning human flesh and hair. The cast and crew have expertly portrayed the betrayal with which fellow man trapped and slaughtered their Jewish neighbors.
The cast remains humble about their performances in “Dear Finder,” describing the experience widely as a privilege; the combined efforts of cast and crew flawlessly capture the poignancy of the lives and deaths of those affected by genocide.
At the end, headlines are read from the past decade concerning the murders of individuals singled out because of their beliefs and ethnicity. The denouement reminds audience members that genocide and the apathy of developed nations and their citizens, still pervades humankind around the world.
Play poignant Holocaust portrait
Published: Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Updated: Thursday, October 22, 2009
 "Photo: N/A")
Be the first to comment on this article!