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Broadway Debut ...
BENEFIT PERFORMANCE OF AWARD-WINNING PLAY SET FOR APRIL 27TH
Bret Sherman, 2018 graduate of the Academy for Performing Arts, and Jacob Morrell, APA Class of 2025, are making their Big Apple debut. The Last Boy - a new play with music will be featured at The Town Hall’s April 27th “a benefit on Broadway…a Yom HaShoah to remember. Sherman is playing the starring role.
“Looking back, I’m very grateful to the APA community for playing such a big part in laying the foundation for this moment.”
The Last Boy…a new play with music is inspired by the incredible story of the boys in Terezin Concentration Camp’s Dorm Number 1, who created the longest-running underground publication of the Holocaust. Every Friday night, the teenage residents of the room would gather in secret to read aloud poems and prose they had written that week. In this way, 80 editions made up of 800 pages of manuscript were “published” - they did not make copies, for security reasons. “If their magazine (called Vedem, or “we are leading” in Czech) had been discovered, the entire room surely would have been immediately transported to Auschwitz,” says playwright Steve Fisher. Sadly, eventually that was exactly their fate. By 1945, every one of the boys had been sent East, except 15 year-old Sidney Taussig. His luck in avoiding transport, and his remarkable foresight to bury the magazine so that the Nazi’s couldn’t burn it, figures prominently into Fisher’s play. Sherman will portray the character inspired by Taussig.
The Last Boy…a new play with music had its triumphant world premiere Off Broadway this past July, winning four Broadway World Awards: Best New Play, Best Production, Best Direction, and Best Performance. On April 27th, the play will be featured at a one-night only benefit performance to commemorate Yom HaShoah. The evening is serving as a benefit for several non-profit organizations.
The curtain will rise on April 27th at 6:00 pm on Sherman and his fellow 17 cast members - 15 of them boys. Another one of those boys is also a member of JCCGNJ - Jacob Morrell. The show will end precisely at sunset - the start of Yom HaShoah. At that moment, 100 young audience members will rise from the audience with a candle in hand, representing all 100 boys who passed through Dorm Number 1. Several of those young people are grandchildren of survivors, who will be present as honored guests. Our 6 Million, an Israel based non-profit whose mission is to remember by name all those who perished in the Shoah, is partnering with the April 27th event so that every audience member also has a candle in hand. On each candle will be the name of a child who perished in Terezin. The production has applied for a permit from the city to allow the audience to process down to Times Square and light those candles as a way to honor the 15,000 children in Terezin who were murdered in the Shoah.
“When I light my candle,” adds Sherman, “I’ll be remembering all 1.5 million young people who perished. It’s an unfathomable number. All we can do is remember, and vow “never again.”
Tickets for the benefit performance at The Town Hall (123 W. 43rd Street between Broadway and 6th Ave) can be purchased here.