This blog is an opportunity for my wife and I to promote ourselves as an acting duo. We are proud members of Actors' Equity Association, the union of professional actors, grateful to our producers and audiences for decades of work in theatre.
A Shayna Maidel
is a memory play in that moves back and forth in time, from New York City in 1946, to flashbacks of Poland immediately before and after the Holocaust. Mordechai Weiss and his 4 year old daughter Rose come to America in the 1920’s, before the Nazis come to power in Europe. Rose’s older sister Lusia and their mother plan to join them later, but illness prevents them from traveling. They are eventually sent to a concentration camp. After the war, Lusia comes to New York to join her father and sister.
The New York Times described A Shayna Maidel as “…a powerful, deeply affecting portrait of a family, which conveys the aftermath of the Holocaust through a poignant, imaginatively conceived examination of one divided family’s experience… a tribute to the sustaining power of family and to man’s indominability.”
Real life sisters Angela and Jacquie Beyer make their ITC debuts as Lusia and Rose. They are joined by another newcomer, Samuel Hicks, and by ITC veterans Bernard Rice, Judy Rossignuolo-Rice and Jeny Wasilewski. The production is directed by Etel Billig.
"A Shayna Maidel" is Yiddish for "Pretty Girl." Judy and I were thrilled to be a part of this poignant portrayal of a family of survivors. The Southtown's October 8, 2009 review of our performances was complimentary: "Bernard Rice offers a measure of humanity that saves the character from becoming a total ogre," and "Judy Rossignuolo-Rice comes through as a loving Mama."
