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Gray wings unfurl and an enormous man-bird, part vulture, part Angel of Death, faces the audience. A young girl emerges from beneath his wingspan, a six-digit number tattooed on her arm.
That striking image opens "Hannah's Shawl," an original drama by Henry I. Schvey, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences. The play, which was commissioned last year by the St. Louis Holocaust Museum to mark Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, will receive its theatrical premiere this month in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre.
Performances begin at 8 p.m. Feb. 17, 18 and 19, with matinee shows at 3 p.m. Feb. 19 and 20. Performances continue the following weekend at 8 p.m. Feb. 24, 25 and 26.
Set in the early 1970s, "Hannah's Shawl" tracks the Holocaust's continuing emotional toll on three generations of a St. Louis family. Oma, a survivor who lost her husband and son to a Nazi death camp, now lives with her daughter Rachel (also a survivor), her son-in-law Eli and their daughter, the 17-year-old Hannah. Though rarely spoken of, Oma's past remains a constant presence in the household, and Hannah, at once terrified and deeply curious about that legacy, struggles to understand how it has shaped both her family and herself.
"The play asks a simple question: how does the memory of the Holocaust survive after the people who lived through it pass on?" explained Schvey. "Hannah's role is to find out what happened, in a household and at a time when the Holocaust was rarely discussed."
Yet Hannah's inquiries are constantly deflected by the wounded adults around her -- particularly by Rachel, whose seemingly distant presence masks a profound sense of victimization -- and Hannah's curiosity soon turns to obsession. Visions of the camps begin to occupy her day and night, invading her waking subconscious as well as her dreams. Events finally come to a head when Hannah begins receiving visits from the ghost of Morrie, Oma's lost son.
Schvey, who did extensive research on the Holocaust and survivors while writing "Hannah's Shawl," noted that the effects of such trauma often echo through whole generations.
"Children of survivors carry tremendous pressures," Schvey said. "Their very existence is a miracle, the proof that Hitler didn't win, and that places great expectations upon them."
Director Annamaria Pileggi, senior artist in residence in the PAD, said: "The story is bigger than just one family. It's really a kind of history of the Jewish people, of how the weight of this horror is passed from generation to generation. And I think that the play's non-naturalistic elements -- the dream sequences, the scenes with the vulture, the scenes with the ghost -- give it a tragic quality that's almost Greek in scale."
Tickets are $10 for the general public and $8 for senior citizens and Washington University faculty, staff and students. Tickets are available at the Edison Theatre Box Office, 935-6543, and through all MetroTix outlets, 534-1111. For more information, call 935-6543.
