11/20 and 11/23: Readings of Andrei Kureichik’s The Empty Shell of War
Reading of new play based on Fortunoff testimonies by Andrei Kureichik at Museum of Jewish Heritage
The Museum of Jewish Heritage in NYC and the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies invites you to attend areading of Andrei Kureichik’s new play The Empty Shell of War.
When: November 20 at 7:00 PM and November 23 at 2:00PM
Where: Museum of Jewish Heritage, NYC
Please click on this link to register for a showing.
About the Play
A response to the policy of Holocaust denial pursued by Alexander Lukashenko’s dictatorial regime in Belarus, The Empty Shell of War follows the journey of a young Jewish girl from a Belarusian shtetl, through the horrors of World War II, to her life as a wife and mother after the war. Grounded in authentic testimonies from Belarusian survivors of the Holocaust archived at the Fortunoff Video Archive at Yale, this reading features Rachel Botchan as The Woman, accompanied by live music composed and performed by D. Zisl Slepovitch.
ANDREI KUREICHIK is a renowned Belarusian playwright, director, and publicist living in exile. Author of over 30 plays performed globally, his works include the groundbreaking Insulted.Belarus, a centerpiece of the global theater solidarity movement. His plays have been translated into 39 languages and honored with awards, including the 2023 Best Foreign Play of the Season in Los Angeles and the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Speech.
CREATIVE TEAM
D. ZISL SLEPOVITCH (composer, woodwinds, sound design) is a native of Minsk, Belarus, a New Yorker since 2008. He is a Jewish music scholar (Ph.D., Belarusian State Academy of Music), composer, a multi-instrumentalist klezmer, classical, and improvisational musician (woodwinds, keyboards, vocals); a music and Yiddish educator. Slepovitch is a founding member of the critically acclaimed groups Litvakus and Zisl Slepovitch Ensemble, a regular contributor to the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, a Musician-in-Residence at Yale University’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, a pianist and music coordinator at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York. Slepovitch’s credits include “Defiance" movie, "Eternal Echoes” album (Sony Classical), “Rejoice" with Itzhak Perlman and Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot (PBS), and “Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish" (off-Broadway).
SHILARNA STOKES is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Research Scholar in the program of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at Yale. She has directed over thirty plays and musicals in theaters throughout the United States, and has received numerous awards, residencies, and fellowships for her directing work. Her current book project, “Playing the Crowd: Mass Pageantry in Europe and the United States,” examines large-scale political pageants performed in England, the US, Russia, France, and Germany. She is a graduate of Yale (BA in Theater Studies and Comparative Literature), Columbia University School of the Arts (MFA in Directing), and the Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (PhD in Theatre).
RACHEL BOTCHAN is an award-winning performer with extensive Off-Broadway and regional theater experience and a variety of stage, TV and film credits, She is known for her dynamic range and transformative portrayals. She is an award-winning audio book narrator with many titles for Recorded Books and Audible. She is a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts where she received the Seidman Award for excellence in Drama.