I just finished up a workshop production of The Album, the new play in development over at Tectonic Theater Project. What a powerful play, even at this early stage in development – I feel so lucky to have gotten to work on it, and I can't wait to see how the script will continue to grow!
From the Tectonic website:
The Album: Here There are Blueberries is Tectonic Theater Project’s groundbreaking theatrical investigation into the Hoecker Album, a collection of photographs that changed history. Donated to United States Holocaust Memorial Museum curator Rebecca Erbelding after 60 years in storage, the Hoecker Album was the personal pet project of Karl Hoecker, second-in-command at Auschwitz. Yet unlike the infamous images of Auschwitz victims, the Hoecker Album reveals a part of the death camp unknown to any outside the SS – Solahutte. This Auschwitz vacation retreat hosted SS wives and children, elite secretaries (known as Helferinnen), and visiting dignitaries all relaxing and celebrating with some of the most notorious figures of the Third Reich – Rudolf Hoess, Richard Baer, and Josef Mengele.
But who exactly was Karl Hoecker and why did he document Solahutte so painstakingly? What do these photos of seemingly banal moments tell us about the nature of evil? This new play still in development draws from the album itself, historical artifacts, first person accounts, and interviews conducted with Holocaust survivors and historians. These interviews include a fascinating discussion with Rebecca Erbelding, detailing how she first received and oversaw the album’s authentication and began identifying the persons in the photographs. Moisés, in collaboration with company members Barbara Pitts McAdams and Amanda Gronich, has employed Tectonic’s devising process, Moment Work, to transform their research into a theatrical narrative about the people behind the most systematic mass extermination in human history.