The Play

If I should not survive, how I die will show me who I really am.

— Etty Hillesum

Standing alone on a bare stage, Etty speaks directly to the audience as she wrestles to write the life she is living--her loves, her work, her sense of humor, her knowledge of self in this moment in history. She loves much of her life in 1942 occupied Amsterdam and even later in the Westerbork concentration camp, yet she also finds it horrifying. In her gentle yet forthright way, Etty asks us not to leave her at Auschwitz but to let her have a bit of a say in what she hopes will be a new world.

A disarming one-woman play, Etty invites the audience to be part of her intimate struggle to find a freedom within herself as the world closes in around her. Music from Westerbork's cabaret weaves into Etty’s sharp accounts of the transports, the image of a guard picking purple lupines, and the shape of her lover's mouth. The second act invites the audience to join the conversation Etty begins.

Etty Trailer

Book or Attend a Performance

Please contact us to book a performance at your venue.

To attend a performance, please check upcoming events to see if there is an online or in person in your area.