How do you teach the legacy of the Holocaust without opening old wounds, yet still speak the plain truth?

Artistic directors Wayne Brinda and Jonathan Rest consider that question as their respective theater companies -- Prime Stage and Jewish Theatre of Pittsburgh -- prepare productions that try to recapture the past to illuminate the present.

The Jewish Theatre will open Israel Horovitz's "Lebensraum" next week. Tomorrow, Prime Stage opens a pair of one-act plays by Celeste Raspanti that deal with the painful history of a 16-year-old Holocaust survivor and her friends.

Butterfly Project

As part of a teaching fellowship for the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., Brinda has been assigned to create a national model for theater companies and schools on how to use the arts to teach the Holocaust.

Laura McCarthy Elizabeth Chappel portrays Raja Englanderova in "The Butterfly Project" Click photo for larger image. 'The Butterfly Project' Where: Prime Stage at 937 Liberty Ave., Downtown. When: Through March 20; Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2:30 p.m. Tickets: $8-$15; 412-394-3353.

Through Prime Stage, his theater for adolescents and adults, Brinda will provide guidelines for lobby setup, scenery, rehearsals and research. He suggests students and teachers consult expert sources, and -- if possible -- talk directly to survivors.

His challenge was to bring "the history and the literature of the Holocaust alive through theater," he says.

Brinda's Butterfly Project is a joint production of "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" and its sequel, "The Terezin Promise." Together, they tell the history of Raja Englanderova, a teenager living in the internment camp of Terezin near Prague during the Nazi regime.

Raja, one of the few children who survived Terezin, saved the drawings and poems of children who were less fortunate, preserving firsthand documentation.

"It is a little-known story that needs to be told," says Brinda.

Terezin was not a death-camp like Auschwitz but a Jewish ghetto set up by the Nazis. Masses of people, cramped into restricted space, suffered from hunger, exhaustion and illness.

But from the outside, Terezin looked like a paradise for artists, an inspiring little village where the elite were pampered with baked goods and sweets. At least that's what the Red Cross thought on its two visits to the camp, when it was presented as an ideal living space. The illusion was kept up by sending ill-looking inmates directly to Auschwitz to make the camp seem less crowded.

"Auschwitz was the kingdom of death. Terezin was the kingdom of deceit," says Brinda, quoting the original book, "I Never Saw Another Butterfly" by Hana Volavkova.

Apart from the terrible realities of the camp, adolescents in Terezin had to deal with peer pressure and other teen troubles in much the same way that kids do today. By humanizing the characters and having the children played by actors exactly their age, Brinda tries to "make [the history] relevant to kids today." The play is aimed at everyone from sixth-graders to adults.

"It is a play of liberation, of hope, of survival -- but also a play of honesty," he says.

A post-show discussion on March 19, "Using the Arts to Teach the Holocaust," will be held with Holocaust survivors, representatives of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and Linda F. Hurwitz, former director of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh.

Among other educational activities, Prime Stage is organizing workshops with Pittsburgh sixth-graders taught by Rebecca Covert about how to express positive memories through collages, just as the children in Terezin did to help them survive.

The pictures and poems of the children in Terezin are proof of their lives, humanity and feelings. In their art, their sufferings, fears and hopes live on.

"We are bringing to life the dreams of these children, the dreams they once had," says Brinda.

With Brecht against the Holocaust

The Jewish Theatre's production of Horovitz's "Lebensraum," which Rest says could be called a "thought experiment," takes a different approach to the legacy of the Holocaust.

	Playing all 80 roles in the Jewish Theatre of Pittsburgh's "Lebensraum" are, from left, Erika Cuenca, Martin Giles and Joel Ripka. Click photo for larger image. 'Lebensraum' Where: Jewish Theatre of Pittsburgh at Katz Theatre, JCC, Squirrel Hill. When: March 10-27; Wed.-Thurs. 8 p.m.; Sat. 5 and 8:30 p.m.; Sun. 2 p.m. Tickets: $15-$22; 412-394-3353 or www.proartstickets.org.

Horovitz devises a hypothetical scenario in which the German chancellor, as an act of redemption, invites 6 million Jews from all over the world to come "back home" and live in Germany. The play shows how 80 individuals react to the strange invitation.

Paying homage to Berthold Brecht, the numerous characters are presented by only three actors, instantly switching from role to role. Other devices of Brechtian "alienation" include a barren stage with movable platforms.

The form of the play -- one reason Rest was drawn to it -- poses a challenge to him and cast members Martin Giles, Erika Cuenca and Joel Ripka.

"It's forcing us to think in new ways in terms of how theater is made and done."

The underlying issue that relates "Lebensraum" to the Butterfly Project is how society tells its youth about the Holocaust. "The play seems to say that in Germany -- at least until recently -- the issue was not very well taught, or not taught in much detail," says Rest.

To test the playwright's assumption, the Jewish Theatre will hold a post-show discussion of "Lebensraum" on March 20 with two young Germans currently interning at the Holocaust Center here.

The play is not only about how Germany deals with the past. Rest is convinced that guilt is not a one-dimensional phenomenon.

"I think a lot of people in the world turned their head the other way when it happened," he says. "I would say the guilt is not unique to Germans, although certainly their guilt is different than anyone else's."

Rest has two goals. "First, we are hoping to accomplish a very compelling night of theater." Secondly, "if we can foster a new way of looking at the legacy of the Holocaust, that would be wonderful."