MASS APPEAL, 1943

AN ORIGINAL PLAY BY MURRY SIDLIN

SUNDAY, MARCH 4 AT 2:00PM | STUDIO THEATRE
1501 14th Street, NW
Washington, DC

A STAGED READING DIRECTED BY ROBERT KALFIN

About the Play
Mass Appeal, 1943 is a one-act play conceived and written by Maestro Murry Sidlin. Composed of two scenes with musical interlude, and set in the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in Czechoslovakia, it tells the dramatic story of prisoner and conductor Rafael Schächter who argued before the Camp’s Council of Jewish Elders his justification to perform the Verdi Requiem with a prisoner choir.

The play forcefully presents the moral and ethical arguments, both pro and con, for a performance of the Requiem; and ultimately asks the question, why would Jewish prisoners in a Concentration Camp under brutal Nazi control sing a Catholic Mass? With no written record of what actually happened during the meeting in 1943, Sidlin creatively imagines these arguments and the clash of personalities as both sides battle to determine what it meant to be a Jew during the darkest days of WWII, and if great Catholic music could serve the Jewish prisoner population.

IF YOU WISH TO ATTEND, TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR.