In 1992 Andrea Stolowitz was studying abroad in Moscow working on perfecting her Russian language skills. It was a tumultuous year. There was a coup. Her university closed. She had nothing to do and was very lonely.
Her ultimate salve was seeing theater every day. “At that time one could buy theater tickets at the subway kiosks for student prices of one or two rubles which was the equivalent of pennies,” she says. “I couldn’t believe that the country was falling apart, but the theaters were full.”
Stolowitz saw how people longed to gather and use art as a medium for connection, conversation and community. “I was blown away by the power that theater had in uniting people around a shared live artistic experience,” she explains. “I knew then and there I wanted to work in theater as a playwright. I wanted to tell the stories and craft the events that would bring people together.”
Since then Stolowitz’s work has been performed around the globe from Berlin to New York to Oregon and everywhere in between. She is a recipient of Artists Repertory Theatre’s $25,000 Fowler/Levin play commission where she is a Playwright-in-Residence. Stolowitz is a member of New Dramatists class of 2024 and an affiliated writer at The Playwrights’ Center. She is also a three-time winner of the Oregon Book Award.
Stolowitz’s play The Berlin Diaries is an autobiographical story about her quest to better understand her lineage and its complicated history. In this intimate story she delves into her great-grandfather’s life as a German Jew and the journal he kept for his descendants after escaping to New York City in 1936.
“I always wondered, as the character of Andrea wonders in the play, why my family is so small and why no one gets along,” shares Stolowitz who turned to his diary for guidance. What she wrote is a work about displacement, assimilation and hope. As she writes in the play, “May the suffering of each generation decrease.”
This week to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day The Berlin Diaries will be released by Artists Repertory Theatre as an audio drama. Directed by Dámaso Rodríguez and with composition and sound design by Rodolfo Ortega, two performers, (Miriam Schwartz, Michael Mendelson), play a variety of characters weaving the past and present.
For Stolowitz working to transform The Berlin Diaries into an audio drama was a thrilling opportunity to imagine her work in a new medium, especially during a time when artists are reinventing themselves. “It was a moving and artistically fulfilling experience that has created an inventive way of engaging with this autobiographical story about the legacy of historical events on individual lives,” she shares. There is also the bonus of collaborating with Artists Repertory Theatre, her current artistic home. For Stolowitz it was a gift during such a troubled time.
Jeryl Brunner: How would you describe The Berlin Diaries?
Andrea Stolowitz: The play is a quick-witted and achingly funny and heartfelt drama chronicling my search to locate the descendants of family lost in the Holocaust and the diaspora afterwards. It is a probing examination into why I, and the character in the play called “Andrea Stolowitz,” wants to find them. The play is a search for home and family that operates at the border of reality and memory. It intersects national history and private lives.
Brunner: Can you talk more about your family?
Stolowitz: Growing up I was always jealous of friends who had a lot of relatives. I looked on longingly as others participated in family reunions. I knew that many of my family members were killed or displaced in the Holocaust. As for the no one getting along, this too always felt to me tied to the Holocaust and the losses, halted dreams, and interrupted lives. Their loss became my loss and in some sense I wonder if this is what intergenerational trauma means.
I recently received an email from a relative whose family left Berlin for Chile in 1939. He found me through discovering my play as a PDF online as he searched for his family’s last name. Once I checked the primary source material and gave him information about his family which I had collected in order the write my play, he wrote me an email. It said, "Hello Cousin,Thanks for the quick response. That is very exciting, finding a cousin. More so, since we are not a very big family, the tragedy of the Holocaust took care of it. So this is a big event!” His words touched me because that's how I have felt my whole life. And he is correct. It is a big event.
Brunner: How did writing The Berlin Diaries change you?
Stolowitz: I healed in two ways. First, I learned that I was not alone and that the aftermath of the Holocaust has generational impact. It seems obvious to say, but I never knew that the profound loss I felt was actually quite common. Second, I also healed because I began to complete the mystery of my great-grandfather’s diary. He left all these clues about missing relatives, but he died before people could be reunited. The knowledge of who was lost and who was still alive or had survived and where they went died with him. Once I picked up the diary to make it the basis for my play I was then forced to go on this detective hunt through Berlin archives answering the questions his diary left open. My play is the next generation's answer to his diary.
Brunner: How did it help you to spend time in Berlin working on the play?
Stolowitz: I spent a year doing archival research and interviews in Berlin. I would find a piece of information in the diary and then I would follow up with library research and on the ground research like visiting a headstone in a cemetery my great-grandfather mentioned or I would go to an apartment building where he said a relative lived. At one point I had a jogging route that would take me past ten relatives' apartments.
The search for the truth of the details in the diary became the story of the play. The writing of the play became the story of the play. I was also very lucky to be a playwright-in-residence at English Theatre Berlin/International Performing Arts Center. The Artistic Director, Daniel Brunet, pushed me to keep delving into the play and pushed me to write it. I couldn’t have achieved the writing of the play without his support. He is the rare artistic director who sees it as his job and his dedication to inspire the artists with whom he works. I also received financial support from the DAAD, (German Academic Exchange Service), to research the play and to live in Berlin.
Brunner: So many people dream of doing something creative like writing plays, but don’t have the courage to do so. What would you advise?
Stolowitz: I think art making and creativity should be present in our lives. Take a writing class, a painting class, an acting class. Make something. We all have stories to share. Sure, not everyone is going to be a professional artist, but I am not planning on being an olympic swimmer, yet I still enjoy my swim team.
Brunner: What is some of the best writing guidance you have received?
Stolowitz: After you have finished the last play, begin the next one. Being an artist in the United States is a war of attrition. You succeed by being the last one standing. Also, find your collaborators and stick with them.
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