Fania's role in the Resistance

I found this quote very interesting. Even her role in the Resistance relied heavily on her musical abilities.


"I Saw Hitler standing on the top of the Arc de Triomphe... it filled me with such loathing I swore I would spend my life doing what I could to destroy this plague. I sang in cabarets where German officers went. When they were drunk I would photograph the contents of the briefcases and pass them along." - Fania Fenelon on her role in the Resistance


Also, here she is:

Research

So today I was doing some research for the show and (although I know that wiki is sometimes very unreliable) I managed to pull up some really cool stuff.
I found pages on Mandel, Alma, The orchestra, Mengele, and even Commandant Kramer; Plus some various pages on the badges. I hope you'll take a look!

Mandel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Mandel
Orchestra:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_orchestra_of_Auschwitz
Alma:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alma_Rosé
Kramer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Kramer
Mengele: (Some information is graphic and you may not like it, so I'm giving you the head's-up)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mengele

After finding Kramer, I got pretty excited and tried really hard to find Schmidt and Heinz, but I couldn't. If anyone find them it would be great to put 'em up. But for now, I also looked in on some badges and found some really cool stuff. I found two charts which were, unfortunately, in German, But was persistant and managed to pull up a page with an english chart.

German:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Kennzeichen_für_Schutzhäftlinge_in_den_Konzentrationslagern.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/German_concentration_camp_chart_of_prisoner_markings.jpg

English page: (The chart's at the bottom)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badges

I know Mr. Jackson wanted us to create our own characters, but I thought it might help to have some idea of your jobs, positions, daily duties, etc.(Sorry Claire, I figured Fania was easy enough to find!) Have fun!
~Erin

Transformations in the show

Hey guys, Mr. Jackson said we should start our own posts so I thought I would give it a try. This blog is really important and I want to be more active in it.

For me, one of the most interesting aspects of playing Marianne is how she changes through the show. At the beginning, she is afraid of everything and puts her life completely in Fania's hands. As the show progresses, She realizes she can't simply depend on Fania and seeks food by other means. She even becomes so independent that she turns her back on Fania in the end. I want this transformation to become more and more visible through my acting. Running act one and two has made me realize this.

I think a sort of transformation is in every character. What do you guys think? I know by the end Esther has grown a sort of admiration for Fania that she didn't have at the start of the show. I'd love to hear what the rest of the cast and crew think about this.

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Fania Fenelon was tatooed with this number.

She survived quite a while in Paris being half Jewish and a celebrated Cabaret singer. Her deportation occured in early 1944 and the liberation of the camp occurs exactly one year later in January of 1945.

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/auschwitz/

-Corey

The Resistance...

Caitlin asked about the resistance movements at our last rehearsal and this is something you should all be aware of especially if that is your particular characters background. Some of the Aryan members of the orchestra did not land here because of faith, background, or sexual preference. Some, like the poles, were considered racially inferior due to their nationality. Up until 1942, non-Jewish poles were the majority at Aushwitcz. Sometimes they spoke out in actions which got arms to those in the ghettos and camps. Other times they spoke out in newspapers, opinion columns, etc.

Elzvieta in our show has a real dilemna. It didn't work. In her eyes, she tried as a member of the Polish Resistance to get the word out and had hoped that when the leaders of her church found out what was going on, it would come to a quick end. It didn't. They didn't bomb the rails leading to the camps. They didn't bomb the smoke stacks and gas chambers. They waited.

Overall Site on all Resistance movements:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:World_War_II_resistance_movements

Great clip on the Warsaw uprising as the poles try to save themselves from two potential enemies, Communist Russia and Nazi Germany:

http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-71-2311-13521-10/on_this_day/conflict_war/twt

Fania was a member of the French Resistance. Here is a great article from the BBC on Ladies of the French Resistance:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7142424.stm


I would be interested in your thoughts on this.

The Grey Zone

At the talkback a few of the actors mentioned how they have been having trouble sleeping. After seeing what I saw tonight, I have a feeling I'm going to have the same problem. The cast and crew are to be commended for an amazingly truthful telling of Nysli's story. Everyone on that stage was full of real actions that led to real emotions which presented real people.

As I was listening to the talkback, I was reminded how important it is that we are doing what we are doing.

I encourage you to go see this. I saw a lot of you there tonight. I am interested in what you learned. As an actor, director, crew member, the best thing you can do is to see more theatre. You learn so much from each experience. For those of you who attended, what did you learn? What did you learn about theatre for social change? What did you learn about the black box style? What did you learn that you can apply to our show or your own character?

Again, thank you to the cast and crew of the Grey Zone for a memorable evening.

The millions not portrayed...

Mrs. Dockser mentioned something to me that I think is very important to think about. Both of our shows (Grezy Zone and Playing for Time) primarily focus on a privledged class of prisoners and we should not forget that they were a minority. Our show deals with that problem in a few ways. In the scene when Fania gets spat on and she has to deal with why a fellow prisoner feels such disdain for her and in our documentary slides shown throughout our production depicting what else was occurring outside the orchestra room.

Thoughts?

-Mr. Jackson

Human...

This review of the Alma Rose biography is very well written. The final paragraph really hit me as it almost perfectly summarizes what a lot of you have been trying to figure out especially in our recreating the SS characters in our show. We've been shocked at how real they are, how human they are. Here is the final paragraph from the review. I think it speaks for itself. It is a look into the actual event that we will be recreating at rehearsal on Tuesday evening.

"The author does not raise this question, but the reader may feel it to be inescapable: Is it really so far from Vienna to Auschwitz? from the Josef Mengele directing endless lines of Jews "to the gas" to the Josef Mengele standing in respect before a memorial of a Jew? Perhaps the distance between them is as paper-thin as human conventions. Perhaps there is no tough moral universe from which we may stray and to which we may return, existing eternally independent from human frivolity. Perhaps there is just us."

http://www.theverylongview.com/WATH/reviews/review20.htm

Today Show Clip on the Holocaust

Interesting short clip from the Today Show on research a Catholic priest is pulling together to help further our understanding of what actually occurred. There are some pretty difficult images in this clip. Thank you to Mrs. Beckman for sending this along.

Our Orchestra...

Tonight's rehearsal was amazing. We handed Jenelle a Cello. Caitlin and Amanda got violins. Jennie picked up an accordion. Erin played the clarinet. All of those people touched these instruments for the first time ever tonight.

Olivia played the piano. Isabel and Kate played the flute. Emily played her Baritone horn and Melissa plucked her guitar. Megan learned her rhythms. Isabel and Claire sang. Amelia couldn't make it tonight, but we can't wait for that oboe.

The sound that was created was music. It wasn't important what it sounded like. What was important was what it did to all of us. It was so much fun, so exhilarating. Remember the feeling you had tonight. I don't want to talk for you, please share on this post. What does it feel like to have an instrument thrown at you and start making music in less then three hours.

I think we should take it on tour!!! :-)

Drive your family crazy practicing.

-Mr. Jackson

11 million

A lot of you have been talking about what Nick brought to our attention on thursday and I agree in it's importance. In the documentary "paper clips", which I talked about in an earlier post, the students set out to collect 6 million clips in memory of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. After their study of the event, they decided to place 11 million in the memorial to honor all that died as a result of this horrible event.

I wanted to stress that it wasn't just religious freedom that was denied, it sometimes was a difference in political views that landed you on the list. We see some of this in Playing for Time. Here is a list of the different types of badges worn in Nazi Germany. We are familiar with the yellow star, but not many people know of the others here:

• Red Triangle – Political

• Green Triangle – Professional Criminals

• Black Triangle – Asocial

• Purple Triangle – Catholic Clergy

• Pink Triangle – Homosexual

• Yellow Star – Jewish

• Violet Triangle – Jehovah Witnesses

The "Asocial" category included prostitutes, vagrants, murderers, thieves, lesbians, and those who violated laws prohibiting sexual intercourse between Aryans and Jews.


-Mr. Jackson