 Check out this great story by Peter Crimmins at WHYY/NewsWorks covering Shannon DiStefano's First They Came For, which ran February 10-12, 2017.
Read the Article - http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/arts-culture/item/101284-experimental-holocaust-drama-by-teen-playwright-staged-in-philly
If you could only share one piece of research or information that you've found in your dramaturgy with an audience, what would that be?  This was a particularly hard play to do dramaturgical research for, though not hard in the conventional sense. There is an abundance of information available about life in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. Many organizations, including the wonderful United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, have made it their mission to compile primary sources and first hand accounts of day to day life during those years. What made it hard was the sheer horror and pain of the truths I was compiling; no matter how many times you read about the progression of events that led to the pogroms, or the experience of suffocating in the gas chambers, it never gets easier to remember that humanity sunk that low. Particularly at this moment in time, when we see xenophobia and hate and fear mixing together once again in a way that seems eerily reminiscent of 1940s Germany, this research is viscerally painful. But what stuck with me the most, and the one piece of research I want to share, is the one that gave me hope.
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