'How? Why?' unites past and present

"How? Why?" examines how the lives of two teenagers change after they learn about their grandparents' roles in the Holocaust.

"It's about the Holocaust, but it's about our generation looking back at it," said writer and director Music senior Francine Liebling. "We obviously have different prejudices, different conclusions since it is two generations away from us."

For writing the script, Liebling drew on her experiences from March of the Living, an educational tour through concentration camps in Poland and Israel she took five years ago.

"Writing it was definitely a challenge, since I've never written a play before and (was) trying to encompass the information (on the Holocaust) without it being overwhelming," she said.

Her research on the period included interviewing a friend from Germany whose grandfather was in the SS, a Nazi security force, and visiting the Jewish Heritage Museum in New York City.

"I felt I knew about the Holocaust, (but) when I started researching I realized I didn't know very much," Liebling said. "Even with writing this, I don't think I even touched upon the magnitude of what's out there."

That spirit of exchanging impressions about the Holocaust also contributed to casting choices. Liebling chose six actors to form the cast, which has African American and Jewish minorities represented.

"I tried to make it diverse," she said. "They had all their own views coming into it."

The actors directly involve the audience in the show. Audience members actually become the Jews in the concentration camp during the performance.

"That's what I set out to do when I wrote this," Liebling said, "to make it interactive and exploit theatre for what it has over film."

These advantages include the movement piece that represents Kristallnacht, the night when many Germans vandalized Jewish homes and businesses. "It relates to current riots and fighting," Liebling said.

"How? Why?" also features multimedia to immerse the audience in images of the Holocaust. The show uses video footage of actual concentration camps as well as slides from Liebling's trip to the camp sites.

Liebling brings her directing career full circle with this project. During her sophomore year of high school she directed her very first play, another show about the Holocaust. Now this show serves as her final college project for her directing major.

"I'm doing my best to connect the past with the present and show that if we don't change, this could easily happen again," Liebling said.

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