YMTC ‘Fiddler’ cast learns lessons from Holocaust survivor

Sam Genirberg, a Holocaust survivor, with Aya Nakashima, Rachel Cornejo, Laurel Schweidel, and Alana Goldberg, all cast members of Fiddler on the Roof. Photo: YMTC

What is Fiddler on the Roof? A charming love story (several love stories, really)? A family drama? A tale of religious/ethnic persecution?

To Jennifer Boesing, the director of the upcoming Youth Musical Theater Company’s production, it is all of these and much more. In her program notes, she says that it is “about the one constant in all of our lives: change. Resistance to change, despair about change, revolting for change, and celebration of change. It is about the necessary challenge of loss and rebirth. It is truly a celebration of what it means to be human.”

Celebrating what it means to be human met its greatest challenge of the 20^th century in the years of the Holocaust. As part of the in-depth approach to theater that marks Boesing’s directorial style and that she encourages in her students, she invited Sam Genirberg, a Bay Area Holocaust survivor, to talk to the cast of 7^th through 12^th graders in the midst of their rehearsals Jan. 23 at their spiffy new rehearsal space on the southern end of Aquatic Park.(...)

Read the rest of YMTC ‘Fiddler’ cast learns lessons from Holocaust survivor (843 words)

By James Corr. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Among the Enemy: Hiding in Plain Sight in Nazi Germany, Asher Witkim, Ethan Ostrow, Fiddler on the Roof, Holocaust, Jennifer Boesing, Sam Genirberg, Sholom Alecheim, Shoshanah Fendel, YMTC, Youth Musical Theater Company