Have you ever ended a phone call with a family member with a pause? The conversation is done and you’ve said goodbye — but neither of you hang up. For playwright Andrea Stolowitz, that pause represents a fear of separation her family still carries generations after fleeing the Holocaust. A phone pause is one of several poignant moments depicted in “The Berlin Diaries,” playing at the JCC CenterStage through March 16.
“The Berlin Diaries” is an autobiographical, meta-theatrical play about genealogy and family presented as a National New Play Network rolling world premiere alongside productions at the Theatre Lab at Florida Atlantic University and the Phoenix Theatre Cultural Center. The JCC CenterStage production is directed by Lindsay Warren-Baker and stars Rachel Kodweis and Jon Froehlich, co-founders of the local Infinite Spark Theater Company.
Though inspired by true events, the stage immediately dashes expectations of a conventional, realistic play. The set design by Alec Walsh consists of stacks of dozens of suitcases in muted reds, blues, and browns — far more suitcases than any one person would need on a trip. These piles of luggage become the only set and props the play needs. Luggage handles become phones, backpacks become cradled babies and bikes, a suitcase becomes a grave. It’s a clever theatrical device for a show centered around movement, both involuntary (fleeing the Holocaust) and voluntary (Andrea’s return to Germany).
Two actors enter wearing identical brown overalls and black slip-on shoes, costumes versatile enough to allow them to embody 15 characters. Sometimes both play one character at the same time; sometimes one actor plays two characters at the same time. In the beginning they are both Andrea, splitting their lines and finishing each other’s sentences as they introduce the premise.
In 2010, Andrea Stolowitz received a package from an archivist in D.C. with a diary written by her great grandfather Max, who fled the Nazis in Germany to find refuge in New York. She avoided reading it for many years, but then got a grant to write a play about the diary. “The Berlin Diaries” is the result, covering her time in Berlin researching her family and working on the play.
The script draws from Stolowitz’s background in devised theater, which encourages experimentation and collaboration. Kodweis and Froehlich are perfectly suited to bring this piece to life, as both are talented performers in their own right who work cohesively as a duo. They convincingly take on several roles, rapidly flowing through different ages, genders and accents to portray a range of characters including Andrea’s mother, her literary agent, her uncle, bureaucratic workers and her great-grandfather speaking through his diary from 1939.
In one scene, set at a conference in Berlin, Kodweis plays an old Holocaust survivor asking Andrea, played by Freohlich, about her play; after a moment, they smoothly switch roles, with Froehlich taking on the old man’s accent and hunched posture to finish the scene. These slippery moments — characters appearing and morphing and vanishing — beautifully mimic Andrea’s struggle to find relatives who have disappeared from her family’s memory.
While the play has a deep interest in intergenerational trauma and genealogy, “The Berlin Diaries” is just as much about the act of creating a play. Fortunately, this piece avoids the tiresome self-indulgence that can come from writers writing about their own work. Instead, the use of two actors playing the writer offers a uniquely theatrical glimpse into the writing process: audiences can see Andrea talking to herself and voicing different characters as she works through how to stage a memory. Though the play takes a few stabs at theater as an industry, the love for theater as an art form is abundant.
“The Berlin Diaries” wrestles with what “never forget” means for a family that has lost track of its own history. Full of cleverly used props and engaging performances, the play is a thought-provoking, moving meditation on how theater can be a vehicle for remembering. After its run in Rochester, the show will travel to Jewish Repertory in Buffalo March 20-23. Visit here for more details and tickets.
Katherine Varga is a contributing writer for CITY.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.
