This week has been crazy. I have had nine performances in 7 days. I really enjoyed hearing Ann Tickner speak. How are these things related? They are much more interrelated than one might think! The musical I was in, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, was based on a true story of a Czechoslovakian ghetto during the Holocaust in which a famous Czech artist became a teacher to the children in the ghetto and helped them paint and write about how they felt and what they saw. The teacher hid the paintings and poems in hopes that they would be discovered after the war. A suitcase full of the children’s creations was found in the 1950s and there was a book made.
How is this linked to Ann Tickner? She talked about rewriting history from the point of view of those whose voices were silenced. She said history is written by old, white men and she is attempting to write history from the view of minorities and women.
I thought it was interesting to evaluate the musical as a means of voicing a piece of history that would make it to the history page. The basic facts have been stated. Hitler, FDR, Winston Churchill, Terezin, and Nazi are all terms that make the page in the history book but in between the lines are so many stories. The show I was in was a means of projected the voices of the victimized children onto the ears of students and members of the community.
What if, instead of accepting the history presented to us, we meandered off the beaten trail and discovered more than what the well-known people said in each era? What if we began to see history as a myriad of voices, some deafening and others whispering, but all adding to history and its significance? Just some thoughts.
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