7-time Emmy Award winner Ed Asner & 2-time Emmy & 4-time Tony Award nominee Tovah Feldshuh star in a concert reading of Jeff Cohen’s acclaimed play “THE SOAP MYTH.” The presentation is to help commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The staged reading, directed by Pam Berlin, also features Ned Eisenberg and Liba Vaynberg. It is followed by a Talkback Q & A with the playwright and the cast.
The play dramatizes the friendship that develops between a young Jewish journalist (Liba Vaynberg) and a cantankerous Holocaust survivor (Ed Asner) and poses the question of whether the Nazis made soap from the bodies of murdered Jews. Along the way, the journalist encounters Holocaust historians (Tovah Feldshuh and Ned Eisenberg) and a pernicious and charismatic Holocaust denier (Ms. Feldshuh). The play tackles such provocative themes as how a survivor survives surviving and who has the right to write history.
Mr. Cohen, commenting on recent tragic events in the Jewish community, observes: “In light of the tragic mass murder in a Pittsburgh synagogue and the virulent rise of antisemitism, Holocaust education is more important than ever. I feel a renewed urgency to fight the tide of hatred using the weapons I possess - words and ideas.”
