The third reading in Spencertown Academy's "Works in Progress" series takes place Saturday June 5, 2010 at 4:00pm when eleven actors take the stage for a dramatic reading of Essie & Roe, a new screenplay written by Elizabeth Wilen-Berg and Rose Ross.

Essie & Roe follows the adventures of two schoolgirls who meet in the immigrant neighborhoods of New York City’s old South Bronx. As the girls come of age during the 1950’s, their evolving friendship is challenged when they begin to uncover the well-kept secrets of their unusual family histories. Inspired by real events, the story offers a little known, yet revealing portrait of Post-War life among Holocaust Survivors. The past and present collide as the Survivors and their children struggle to assimilate while building an uncertain future in America.
 

Spencertown Academy’s "Works in Progress" series, organized by Karen Jahn, spotlights the works of local authors.  It brings fresh, new manuscripts to the stage and provides an opportunity for the community to preview works in progress in an intimate setting. A reception and discussion with the writers and actors follows each production.

Out of the Mouths of Babes
The Story of Essie & Roe
By Karen Jahn

It all began in third grade. In 1953, Elizabeth and Rose met at school and a unique friendship began that would eventually span more than five decades. Coming from similar backgrounds, the two young girls were naturally drawn to each other. Both were refugees from the displaced persons camps that had sprung up in Europe in the aftermath of WW II. Both had parents who had suffered through the Holocaust. Both were recent immigrants struggling together with their families to assimilate to a new life in America. Each girl had a unique story to tell; yet both kept silent—that is, until now.

Just as the girls were about to start Junior High, Rose’s family moved out of the neighborhood. The girls would not see each other again for twenty-five years. Unexpectedly, they met by chance in Columbia County. Both women were married, busy with careers and raising children, with little time for resurrecting the past. They lived miles apart and traveled in very different worlds.

It wasn’t until each had experienced the pain and sadness of their fathers’ deaths that Elizabeth and Rose reconnected. In the year 2000, at a “Hillary-for-Senator” fundraising event in Columbia County, they met unexpectedly and came upon the idea of writing a screenplay together—and that is how Essie and Roe was born. They started talking about the past with each other. Then, they wrote about it and shared what they had written. They interviewed their mothers and recorded the interviews. They had themselves videotaped. They took advanced writing classes, wrote memoirs, and joined professional writers’ groups, all the time searching for a way to bring their story forth.

No sooner had they begun to work on the screenplay when life intervened again. On September 11, 2001, Rose had just videotaped the last of her interviews with her mother in Florida, shortly before she died. Meanwhile, Elizabeth had moved to New York and Rose took up permanent residence in Columbia County. The screenplay was never far from either woman’s thoughts, but in order to write together, they communicated via e-mails, long phone calls, and only occasional meetings.

Over the next few years, they spent countless hours shaping each character and event to dramatize certain aspects from their past. Surprised at how easy it was for them to collaborate, each open to the other’s insights and critiques, they honed the fictional plot inspired by various events in both authors’ lives. In Essie and Roe, the authors have captured their survivor families, young and determinedly optimistic.

Several professional critics, screenwriters, actors, teachers, and historians have already deemed it an important tale about Holocaust survivors, a tribute to their parents’ moxie and success in life, and now Spencertown Academy Arts Center is proud to bring this story to the life with a staged reading on Saturday June 5th at 4:00pm.

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