Shylock’s Daughter
Poster Design: G. D. George
Shylock’s Daughter
By: Bill Kennedy
Directed By: Terah Herman
Lighting Design and Technical Direction: Adam Giesz
Set Design: G. D. George
Shylock’s Daughter was an original work by Professor Bill Kennedy. Directed by then undergraduate Terah Herman, the play explored the notion of Jewish inmates in a Nazi Concentration Camp presenting Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice for the camp staff. The play explored themes of good vs. evil, need, collaboration (in the World War II context), and freedom. My research for the scenic design touched me deeply when I discovered a primary resource entitled The Auschwitz Album, which detailed in Nazi photographs the arrival of a train full of Hungarian Jews, most of whom were murdered.
The book is quite simply horrifying.
An old Jewish woman takes care of the little children as they are forced to walk towards the gas chambers. (Photo: http://www.yadvashem.org)
One specific image affected me so strongly that it wound up informing my entire approach to the design. The caption was quite bad enough, but the two children holding hands appeared to be of an age with my own. The photograph affects me to this day.
The Environment
As the audience entered the theatre lobby, they were greeted by statics and stories. The display walls were created by my Play Production class as a project and were intended to help convey scope. They were intended to help an audience far removed from the Holocaust by culture, time, and place, gain an understanding of a series of events that are hard to believe.
As they entered and exited the theatre, over the door was the phrase, “You Shall Tell Your Children.”
Approaching the theatre entrance: darkness. Enter and there is just enough light to see photos enlarged from Auschwitz Album and similar sources lining the wall. The theatre stage and house, usually visible from the ramp leading into the space, are blocked by walls of these photos.
Rounding the corner to go down the ramp, play-goers are confronted with a Dauchau-type gate that enters the theatre proper. The words over the gate “Arbeit Mach Frei” (“Work will set you free”) are projected in red on the wall beyond the gate. A sharp left turn and the theatre-space is revealed. Search lights slowly work their way along the audience seating and stage. The stage is revealed to contain the interior of a barrack with the exterior wall US and cut away to reveal (painted) the outside of the camp and guard towers. Upstage of the wall, on the floor (for the cast and crew only) is a deadline with a single shoe on the opposite side.
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