'Brundibar' brings 'commitment to joy' to Burlington

About a decade ago, Burlington theater artist Trish Denton ran across a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner and famed children’s book illustrator Maurice Sendak. The book was called “Brundibar,” and its Holocaust-era theme of children fighting tyranny made such a strong impact on Denton that her first reaction was, “I want to make this into a play.”

“And lo and behold…” added Sharon Panitch, co-director of the Burlington company Theatre Kavanah. “Brundibar” was made into an opera in the 1930s, Panitch noted, followed decades later by the book by Kushner and Sendak. The existence of a stage work made Denton’s dream to turn “Brundibar” into a play that much easier.

Theatre Kavanah, which bills itself as “staging the Jewish experience,” is presenting Denton’s vision in “Brundibar: A Musical Tale,” which opens Friday in Contois Auditorium at Burlington City Hall. The No Strings Marionette Company of Randolph will open the shows, reflecting the tradition of puppet theater in the Czech culture that’s integral to the story of “Brundibar.”

Denton, whose work includes the dreamy 2012 production “Orkestriska’s Box,” reached out a couple of years ago to Theatre Kavanah co-director Wendi Stein about producing a version of “Brundibar.” The story is told from the perspective of children fighting off a bully for whom the story is named, and was fleshed out while its creators were in the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia in the years leading up to World War II. Children and adults presented 55 productions of “Brundibar” while held at Terezin.

“I’m really interested in it as a resistance piece,” Denton said of “Brundibar,” which she said is also about the freedom of artistic experimentation. “I didn’t want to overlook its original incarnation in the Holocaust.”

The artists behind the 1938 creation of “Brundibar,” led by Jewish Czech composer Hans Krasa, were political and radical, according to Denton. “They had a message of solidarity in the piece,” she said, adding that they were inspired by the confrontational theatrical work of Bertolt Brecht a decade earlier. “It was part of this movement fighting against how elite the establishment had become.”

Emily Friedrichsen didn’t know the backstory of “Brundibar” when she came to the first rehearsal for the play. Now she’s researching the story behind “Brundibar” for a homeschooling project. The 13-year-old from Shelburne said the “depressing” undercurrent of the story comes through in the minor keys of many of the production’s songs.

That’s not the overriding feel of “Brundibar,” though, according to Emily. “It’s a really uplifting show,” she said. She plays a cat and her 9-year-old cast mate, Maxwell Lorber-Lew of Burlington, plays a dog, both of whom help the children trying to drive Brundibar away.

“They’re kind of like the magical force that solves the play,” said James Kochalka, the Burlington cartoonist and musician cast as Brundibar. Kochalka, who is of Czech descent, said the play evokes current events, as Brundibar is “very much a Trump-like figure.”

(Kochalka, whose son, Eli, is in the play, will celebrate his new children’s book, “The Glorkian Warrior and the Mustache of Destiny,” at Phoenix Books in Burlington between the March 19 matinee and evening performances of “Brundibar.”)

Maxwell, the young actor portraying the magical dog, is impressed that the children at Terezin managed to present so many productions of “Brundibar” rather than give up because their freedom had been taken away. “This is ‘Brundibar’ in a nutshell — this play is about teamwork,” he said.

The story of “Brundibar” reflects the need of people to use the arts to express themselves no matter the circumstances they’re facing. It’s about even more than that to Denton.

“To me, ‘the arts’ feels like it’s almost too much of a category,” she said. “It’s more of this undying commitment to joy.”

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at 660-1844 or bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com. Follow Brent on Twitter at www.twitter.com/BrentHallenbeck.

If you go

WHAT: “Brundibar: A Musical Tale” by Theatre Kavanah

WHEN: 7 p.m. Friday-Saturday and March 18-19; 1 p.m. Saturday-Sunday and March 19-20

WHERE: Contois Auditorium, Burlington City Hall

TICKETS: $11-$16 per person; $40 for four-ticket family pack; free for children 3 and under who sit on a parent/guardian lap. 503-1132, www.theatrekavanah.org

Theatre Kavanah will present free lectures in Burlington putting the story of “Brundibar” in historical context. Those talks include:

• 5:30 p.m. Saturday, BCA Center, “Children, Music, Art, and Hope” by Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts, University of Maryland Baltimore County
• 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Main Street Landing Film House, “A Children’s Opera in the Holocaust: Staging Brundibar” by Anna Hajkova, assistant professor of modern European continental history, University of Warwick, England
• Noon, March 17, Ohavi Zedek Synagogue, “Children in Terezin” by Hajkova