{"id":369608,"date":"2025-06-21T06:15:36","date_gmt":"2025-06-21T10:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dctheaterarts.org\/?p=369608"},"modified":"2025-06-21T06:15:36","modified_gmt":"2025-06-21T10:15:36","slug":"andrea-stolowitz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dctheaterarts.org\/2025\/06\/21\/andrea-stolowitz\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrea Stolowitz on why and how she wrote ‘Berlin Diaries,’ now at Theater J"},"content":{"rendered":"

Call it a fictionalized autobiography \u2014 or a memory play, if you will \u2014 The Berlin Diaries<\/em>, extended through June 29 in its regional premiere at Theater J, is the story of the author\u2019s search for a secret that lay hidden for more than 80 years.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a Holocaust tale \u2014 told in its original form by the playwright\u2019s great-grandfather, who buried the truth in order to spare his children and grandchildren from the knowledge of a terrible loss. In the play, facts that were deliberately omitted have been resurrected.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Andrea Stolowitz.<\/a> Photo courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Curious to know why and how the play came about, I talked to Andrea Stolowitz, the multi-award-winning playwright, over a video link from her home in Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her husband, an East German\u2013born physics professor at Reed College. Our interview was sandwiched between her older son’s college graduation and a trip to Ireland, where she is now working on a new play commissioned by the Abbey Theatre.<\/p>\n

Berlin Diaries<\/em> begins in Durham, North Carolina, in 2006. A letter has arrived from the U.S. Holocaust Museum, announcing that the playwright\u2019s great-grandfather\u2019s diary, which she has long refused to read, has been donated to the museum.<\/p>\n

The letter informs Stolowitz that \u2014 in return for this donation \u2014 she will be getting glossy copies of the diary, which was written in 1939 and addressed to her mother\u2019s generation. The diary describes his life in Germany, how he left the country, and his subsequent life in the United States.<\/p>\n

Stolowitz, played by Dina Thomas, looks at the diary and finds it impossible to read. It is written in the tiniest script you\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho reads script anymore?\u201d she asks. She puts it on a shelf and \u2014 though she takes it wherever she moves \u2014 she never opens it again until she is about to go to Berlin for one of her husband\u2019s sabbaticals. At that point, she thinks, \u201cMaybe this diary will have the makings of a good play.\u201d<\/em> In the past, she had never wanted to read it because she didn\u2019t want to deal with the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like enough already,\u201d<\/em> she told me. \u201cBut then I realized that this is not a diary about the Holocaust. There is nothing about the Holocaust in it. It\u2019s about family history and a lot of other things. So I decided that I would make it the basis for a new play. I managed to read seven pages of the document, wrote a proposal, got funding, and then moved to Berlin with my husband. (He\u2019s not in the play, it’s just me, since there\u2019s only so much room on the stage.)\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Lawrence Redmond and Dina Thomas in \u2018The Berlin Diaries.\u2019 Photos by Ryan Maxwell Photography.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But then \u2014 in both real life and the play \u2014 she gets to Berlin and sits down and actually reads the diary, and realizes it is extremely complicated and there’s nothing in it that would lend itself to a play. She is horrified.<\/p>\n

\u201cI practically lose my mind because I have promised this arts organization that I would write a new play, and they have given me money to do it. So I have to do something. And so I begin to think about the time that he was writing this diary, from 1939 to 1948. And I realize that what he\u2019s written is a children\u2019s book. A nice book for nice children. There\u2019s nothing about the Holocaust because, when he starts writing, it hasn’t happened yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe arrives in the U.S. in 1936. By 1939, his daughters are here too. They’re having babies. He begins writing this on the first of January 1939, to give his grandchildren details of his life in Germany. He\u2019s telling them where he is from, his family background, and who he is, because they’ll never know anything about that other world. They will grow up here, in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he starts the diary, Germany has not yet invaded Poland. So yes, there is antisemitism. And yes, Hitler’s in power. But nothing else has happened. And as he\u2019s writing this book, he’s trying to figure out how to report both past and present. But a lot is hidden. He’s not saying things because he’s writing to children.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I use the diary to try to uncover what he would <\/em>have known, what he could<\/em> have known, about what did<\/em> happen to his family. And so I become the first person in my entire family to know that we had 21 first cousins who were killed or rounded up in Berlin and sent to death camps. We didn’t know this. His myth was that everyone made it out alive. In our immediate family, they did. In the rest of the family, they did not.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo the play is about my discovery of the past, my reconciliation with it, and my reconciliation with my own family. In doing so,\u201d she concluded, \u201cI set out to change some of the things that needed to be changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her great-grandfather left Germany in 1936. His first daughter left two years earlier, in 1934. She had been studying medicine in Freiberg and was no longer allowed to continue her studies because she was Jewish. It was the beginning of a series of repressive laws, preventing Jews from entering the professions or from studying at \u201cAryan-only\u201d schools.<\/p>\n

At the time, he was a doctor in Berlin, but under Nazi law, he could no longer earn a living. Luckily, he left early enough to get out, and to be able to work as a doctor in the U.S.<\/p>\n

He was a writer as well, though not professional. He wrote poems, stories, and songs. \u201cI think writing is a Jewish trait, part of keeping memory alive,\u201d Stolowitz said, adding, \u201cthat’s just my theory\u201d and acknowledging that many other faiths share the same proclivity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe play is a memoir,\u201d she explained. \u201cAnd the way I report it is how I experienced it when I searched for the truth in Berlin. Is it the truth? No, because everything that happens in the play is filtered through my personal lens.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, in writing the play, she did set some rules for herself. \u201cI never changed the diary itself. However, I did move portions. For example, sometimes, in the diary, he has an idea, and then he spends five pages explaining it. But all I really needed was the idea. I didn\u2019t need the interstitial stuff. So what I allowed myself to do in the diary was to use certain sections but remove others. Some of it is written in German, which an American audience might not understand. So I translated some things, or just omitted the German.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the diary itself is intact,\u201d she averred. \u201cI didn\u2019t add anything, but I did remove sections and words for clarity.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, she explained, she couldn\u2019t fictionalize any of the diary, since that would amount to Holocaust denial. \u201cThis diary is an actual book that sits in the Holocaust Museum. So if I were to start making up stuff about the Holocaust, that would open the door to people who say, \u2018Well, look, if this<\/em> isn’t true, then that<\/em> isn\u2019t true. And so I’ve been very careful in this play to remember that the tool<\/em> of Holocaust deniers is any misrepresentation<\/em> of the Holocaust.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stolowitz never knew her great-grandfather, since he died in 1949. She was born in 1972.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m 53,\u201d she laughed, describing it as a liberating age. \u201cYou don’t care anymore what people think,\u201d she explained, counting the ways in which turning 50 is a freeing experience. \u201cNobody looks at you as a sex object. Your children still need you, but not in the same way. And you’ve been alive for so long that you can’t really get excited about things. And if you\u2019re still healthy, as I am, it’s perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another liberating aspect of her current life is the freedom from teaching, which leaves a lot more time for playwriting. She just quit this year, after teaching full-time since 2003. She began her teaching career at Duke University in North Carolina \u2014 where the play begins \u2014 then moved west to UC-San Diego, where she got her MFA. Her final stop was at Willamette University in Oregon, where she taught playwriting and screenwriting for film and TV.<\/p>\n

\u201cI left Willamette this year because I received a fellowship from a foundation that gave me $25,000 \u2014 the same amount that I had made as an adjunct professor \u2014 and they said they couldn\u2019t hold my position if I left for a year. So I said, \u2018Okay, I guess I’ll leave.\u2019<\/em> And so now I no longer teach. My husband is still on the faculty at Reed, which is good, since somebody in the family has to have a regular salary.\u201d<\/p>\n

The play itself, according to Stolowitz, is a little different from most because of the way it\u2019s designed. There are just two performers, portraying 14 characters. The two are Lawrence Redmond and Dina Thomas, both well-known and admired for their work on the DC stage. Directing the play is Elizabeth Dinkova, artistic director of DC\u2019s Spooky Action Theater.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Berlin Diaries<\/em> has had several lives, beginning with a two-act version that was produced in Berlin and Oregon before going on tour in Canada. At the time, Stolowitz was working on a shortened version, aiming for its opening in New York in 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe two-act productions were like out-of-town tryouts,\u201d Stolowitz said. \u201cI realized the play was too long, so I wrote the current version, which is one act. But then the pandemic came, shutting down the theaters. When we finally opened in New York, it was 2023.\u201d The theater was 59E59, a small, nonprofit venue adored by serious New York theatergoers.<\/p>\n

Following that run, the play was picked up by the National New Play Network for a Rolling World Premiere. Due to Equity rules, the 59E59 premiere was not included, nor were other productions, including one in Chicago and the other here at Theater J.<\/p>\n

While many of her plays have Jewish characters, she did not realize until recently that the plays themselves were Jewish. For example, her first play, Knowing<\/em> Cairo<\/em>, which was produced in 2003, was about old age and how we, as a society, care for the aged. \u201cIt was not until I wrote Berlin Diaries<\/em> that I understood that the fact that the character was a Holocaust survivor \u2014 like my great-grandfather \u2014 had a lot to do with what happened in the play.<\/p>\n

\u201cI now recognize that Cairo<\/em> is a very Jewish story, as is Berlin Diaries<\/em> and the new play that I’m working on in Ireland. In fact, the Irish play owes its existence to this one,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

What happened was that the Abbey Theatre, Ireland\u2019s national theater in Dublin, liked The Berlin Diaries<\/em> but didn\u2019t want to produce it. Instead, they proposed a play about the remnants of what was once a thriving Jewish community in County Cork, detailing its recent history, what it’s like now \u2014 with just two thousand Jews left \u2014 and its hopes for the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt raises questions that face worldwide Judaism today,\u201d she said, adding that the project began before October 7 and is now quite different from what she envisioned at that time.<\/p>\n

In addition to the Irish play, she has several other productions in the works. One is an opera libretto, called The Limit of the Sun. <\/em>\u201cWe\u2019ve had the workshops, and now we’re waiting for an opera company to take it over,\u201d she sighed. \u201cIt’s about a U.S. journalist who’s been kidnapped and is being held hostage. The other characters include the handler, the journalist’s mother, and an FBI agent. It\u2019s based on a true story, and it’s about international justice and who is tasked with upholding it. It\u2019s also,\u201d she added, \u201cabout mothers and children.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berlin Diaries<\/em> is her eighth play to be produced, though she has dozens more in development or commissioned.<\/p>\n

Stolowitz grew up in Riverdale, a leafy oasis located improbably in New York City, just north of Manhattan, and went to the Horace Mann School and then Barnard College. After Barnard, she moved to Berlin, then returned for graduate school in California, followed by marriage, family, and teaching at Duke in North Carolina.<\/p>\n

Asked why theatergoers should rush to see the play before it closes next week, Stolowitz agreed that the rise in antisemitism \u2014 along with the return of autocratic rule \u2014 makes the Holocaust more relevant than ever. \u201cThe question, \u201c she asked rhetorically, \u201cis how do we, as third- or fourth-generation survivors, move on, while making sure that the Holocaust itself is not forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first generation of survivors is nearly all gone, though their descendants live on, still trying to piece together the puzzle of how it happened and whether it could, given the circumstances arising today, happen again.<\/p>\n

EXTENDED: <\/strong>The Berlin Diaries<\/a><\/strong><\/em> plays through June 29, 2025,<\/strong> presented by Theater J<\/a>\u00a0at the Aaron & Cecile Goldman Theater in the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th\u00a0Street NW, Washington, DC. Purchase tickets ($70\u2013$80, with member, student and military discounts available) online,<\/a><\/strong> by calling the ticket office at 202-777-3210, or by email (theaterj@theaterj.org<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Running Time: 90 minutes with no intermission<\/p>\n

The program for The Berlin Diaries<\/em> is online here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

SEE ALSO:<\/strong>
\nIn \u2018Berlin Diaries\u2019 at Theater J, an absorbing remembrance of lost family <\/a><\/strong>(review by Amy Kotkin, June 11, 2025)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The prolific playwright describes dramatizing her discovery that a great-grandfather’s journal was not what it seemed. 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