[MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> we all had to be there for ea other.

we had to stay together you see such a human because it is the first night you will thank the lord for having kept the two of you alive >> eight nights by jennifer maisel follows a holocaust survivor.

from the moment she arrives in new york in nineteen.

forty-nine through too.

the year twenty sixteen as she builds very, very diverse community of friends and family.

the playwright is a woman named jennifer mizelle who i've collaborated with for almost twenty-five years in twenty sixteen after the twenty sixteen election, she was reading articles in the new york times from the nineteen thirties where there was all of this ugly, hateful speech about the jewish problem and she was at the same time reading fairly ugly, horrifying hate speech in the in twenty sixteen in our own country about the most problem and when the muslim ban went into effect in this country and there were syrian refugees fleeing from aleppo, she said that she knew she had to write something and she knew that she was going to begin it with a holocaust survivor and she was going to end it with a syrian refugee.

and at the same time, what she told me was she had always wanted to write a hanukkah play what she realized, what she could tell eight nights of hanukkah over eight decades to tell the story displaced peoples who need refuge.

but the promise and the hope of this country, the ways in which we must do better.

[MUSIC] >> my jaw hit.

thank you.

>> last february as we were sitting together as an artistic leadership team making decisions about the season, was that kind of a high point of anti-semitic violence and anti semitic, hate speech in this country?

and we decided that it was extremely, extremely important to tell this story.

now, in particular, it talks both about the uniqueness of the experience of holocaust survivors, but also the universality of persecuted and and the experiences that black americans, japanese americans, lgbtq americans and muslim americans face.

we felt like this story not only would address the alarming rise in anti-semitism that we were experiencing and are experiencing in this country.

but it would also create bonds and unity that are they are and should be there.

>> theater does that.

you're experiencing it together.

you're alive in the room together while most wallet.

>> nowadays, not without struggle and not a straight line.

yes, but we marched with you aaron and i marched, and the civil rights act just signed progress so much progress will not sit back to what i would like to.

i think that serve with that.

but that can't be true.

>> this play does a really great job about taking different cultures with very similar experiences and bringing them together.

and the kicker about that is we try our best to be empathetic to everyone into everyone's experience.

but it's it's different when you actually experience it.

so there's there's this.

there's this line of we are in support of you.

we are in alliance with you.

we understand you and then the other side of it is.

but you didn't go through it or it's not happening to you.

>> i just turned eighteen has become more.

the enlisted been to make it.

>> here's one the sea without.

so if you want, you know what we want to see into the summit.

>> in the show, i think we are also exploring themes of trauma and how to deal with it like or if you do with it at all or what happens if you don't.

and there are things that you saw that will never leave you.

that is that is a reality of of war.

and it's a it's a reality of history.

>> you did this for a tate.

you liberated the camps.

you couldn't.

he just made schoolies three d well.

so few that was only so much you could do it.

you did everything you could.

>> but they've actually been quite a few holocaust children of holocaust survivors who have president and and joined us in this story telling in this experience, so many people in the audience have talked about feeling very seen as children of survivors watching the relationship between that daughter and the granddaughter and rebecca, who is a survivor.

>> my relationship with my mother who knows what it would have bee if we didn't go to auschwitz if we didn't go to dachau i might have been spoiled.

and discontented and as normal as you are.

>> theater communes us even closer and brings us as a community and also helps us each other in a way that we don't get to see and hear and listen and communicate.

there just aren't that many spaces where we are with people who aren't like us, honestly and theater allows us to come together with people who have really different lived experiences than ours.

it really addresses the way all of our stories are connected and it really truly builds empathy.

it truly encourages people to look at someone else's story and say i see myself and that i think is beautiful hope in it and beautiful healing and it.