Reviewed by Dr. Tiffany Knight Raymond, PhD and Theron Raymond (6th grader)
The enGAGE program brings together the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh and Prime Stage Theatre in creating performances that address the atrocities of genocide. Prime Stage’s current production showcases playwright Celeste Raspanti’s two plays, I Never Saw Another Butterfly and The Terezin Promise, which are thoroughly meta. Through the plays as art form, we see how drawing art and writing poetry helped children find agency and give voice to their experiences amongst the horrors of the Terezin concentration camp.
While the production is positioned as two plays, it would be more accurately described as one play with two acts. The characters are the same, and the storyline is continuous. The Terezin Promise picks up where I Never Saw Another Butterfly ends.
Alex Keplar’s set design is brutalist and unchanging. The towering, yet bleakly earth-toned walls with sharp angles symbolize the unblinking horrors they hide. A stark black and white sign in all caps arches over the entrance to Terezin and commands “ARBEIT MACHT FREI.” The German phrase translates to “work sets you free” and was displayed at camp entrances. This visual icon is chillingly ominous from our vantage point as work was in fact enslavement, and freedom was an illusion.
Costume designer Meg Kelly triumphs with rough, patchy fabrics in shades of brown and gray. The costumes are outward manifestations of those who wear them – dirty and dispirited but holding together.
The play only becomes infused with color when the children read their poems. “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” is both the play’s title and a poem’s name that personifies the camp. The title mourns the details we lose that we never even thought of as privileges. The impact is heightened by the fact flowers on the property are repeatedly mentioned, suggesting that even though the butterflies have reason to, they choose to avoid Terezin.
Holland Adele Taylor is inspiring as the production’s lone adult, art and poetry teacher Irena Synkova. Taylor channels a forceful, but maternal, power. She effortlessly calibrates to each child’s needs while not understanding the chaos herself or being able to provide rational answers for why this is happening. She inspires her students to experience joy and hope because it is hope that helps them survive. Notably, Taylor also portrayed Annie Sullivan in Prime Stage’s production of The Miracle Worker where she also demonstrated an instinctual unsung leadership as she wrangled a young Helen Keller.
Synkova helps main character, Raja Englanderova (commandingly played by Meredith Kocur) adapt to Terezin and invites her into the community of children she teaches art and poetry to. This community deepens relationships, which creates accountability for preserving the artistic byproducts of their suffering to ensure history is learned from, not repeated.
Genocide can only be a heavy and triggering word. Yet, what shines through most in Raspanti’s plays is hope fostered by community and through art. Art by its very nature outsurvives its creator and lives on to teach, inspire, and provoke thought. While so many lives in Terezin and other concentration camps were cut tragically short, their art lives on.
At the play’s start, the children take turns reading “their” poems aloud, which are actual poems written in the camps. Helga Weissova (Eva Balodimas Friedlander) reads her poem last. Director Wayne Brinda subtly demonstrates the power of art, having Friedlander gradually stand taller as she reads on. Friedlander movingly quavers as she reads: “friends depart — for other worlds…we want to have a better world.” Departure is such a poignant, tender positioning of the brutality of death in a concentration camp. These worlds interconnect in Helga’s poem, at Terezin, and still today. The responsibility to help create that “better world” is no less urgent than ever before. May we all do so.
-TKR, Ph.D.
You can see Prime Stage’s I Never Saw Another Butterfly and The Terezin Promise through March 9, 2025 at the New Hazlett Theater, 6 Allegheny Square East, Pittsburgh, PA, 15212. Purchase tickets online here.
