two teens for sbhf35 and sjcaf

I do get tired of being in the choir at some of these events, but it's nice that I was not alone.

Kaye was with me during the performance, and we joined Barbara for the question session.

I also saw Penny and Lonnie and Cindy, fellow volunteer ushers from my days at the Lucas and Trustees Theatres.

Even so, it had been a difficult play to witness on its premier in Savannah.

"Anne & Emmett" was centered on two youths in a place called Memory, which they could only inhabit when someone remembered them.

That was the first truly sad part of the play by Janet Langhart Cohen.

She had been a teenaged girl herself when the concept had first come to her, having been studying about Anne Frank's life when she heard about Emmett Till.

I can certainly understand that.

Perspective makes a difference, and she was right place, right time for the stories of the 16-year-old girl and 14-year-old boy, teenagers like herself, who died simply for being born the way they were...

as if they had any choice in that.

That truly is the evil root of prejudice and of hate crimes: people being bullied and persecuted and tortured and killed, for something they could not change.

We cannot change our skin color, we cannot change our cultural identity, we cannot change our gender identity, we cannot change the family we were born into.

I don't understand why some people choose hate on such a basis.

"Different" doesn't mean "bad" and certainly does not mean "must be destroyed."

Honestly, how could anyone justify what was done to those children?

 

For children Anne and Emmett certainly were.

Even the two who played them were teens.

There were three adults: one for her father, one for his mother, and one to represent the haters.

Why Otto Frank and Mamie Till?

Because they made sure that others knew what had happened to their children, in hopes of making sure others' children would not die.

And now, here we are in the 21st century, several generations later, and the message still needs to be preached, here in the United States, over in Europe, all around the world: stop killing people on the basis of things they cannot change.

I do hope the four other scheduled performances will be as well attended as the one here at the JEA.

Thanks, Savannah Jewish Cultural Arts Festival for bringing this play during the Savannah Black Heritage Festival, for the stories of these two children, with the painting in the backdrop of her chestnut tree conjoined with his.

Yes, it was a hard message, but it was well told.