Entry 4: September 26, 2016 -- The Place Where This Story Will Be Told
I have never stepped foot inside the Actors Temple Theatre.
There. I suppose that's an unusual way to begin an entry about the place where I will soon spend nearly a month performing Undesirable Secrets. But it's the truth. I haven't stood on its stage. I haven't sat in one of its seats. I haven't walked through the doors at 339 West 47th Street and looked up at the Star of David that has watched over that building for generations.
Not yet.
What I have done is spend a great deal of time lately learning about the place where I will be telling Anthony's story beginning February 25. And the more I learn about it, the more I find myself asking a question that has nothing to do with theatre bookings, contracts, schedules, or any of the other things that go into producing a play in New York.
Of all the theatres in that city, how did Anthony's story find its way here?
If you've been following The Diary, you're beginning to know me a little better, which is one of the reasons I started writing these entries in the first place. I'm a historian, playwright, author and actor, and much of my work has involved looking for people whose stories somehow slipped beyond the edges of the history most of us were taught. Anthony C. Acevedo became one of those people for me.
Anthony was a twenty-year-old Mexican American Army medic when he was captured during World War II. Eventually, he became one of approximately 350 American POWs sent to Berga, where they were forced into slave labor under horrific conditions.
But there is something important to understand about how those men came to be there.
The Nazis were looking for Jewish American soldiers.
At Stalag IX-B, Jewish American POWs were separated from the other prisoners. They were being singled out for something far worse. Ultimately, approximately 130 Jewish American POWs were sent to Berga along with other American prisoners the Germans had selected for the labor detail. Anthony was among those men.
That fact has always been central to Undesirable Secrets. It is one of the reasons Anthony's experience belongs within the larger history of the Holocaust. A young Mexican American medic found himself imprisoned alongside Jewish American soldiers whom the Nazis had deliberately identified and separated, and he witnessed what happened to them.
Anthony did something else. He wrote it down. He secretly kept a diary, recording what he witnessed and the deaths of men he could not save. He carried that diary through Berga and the Death March and eventually home to America. Then, for more than six decades, he carried something else. Silence.
I first approached Anthony as a historian and writer. Eventually, I wrote his biography. Then a screenplay. Then a play. Somewhere along the way, however, something changed. I stopped simply writing about Anthony and began portraying him. That has meant standing alone on stages in Texas, New Mexico and New York, trying to bring not only Anthony to life, but the men whose names he carried with him.
And now Anthony and I are headed back to New York. This time, to the Actors Temple. At 339 West 47th Street stands a building that has spent more than a century bringing together two worlds that are now central to my own life: Jewish history and the theatre.
The congregation dates to 1917 and eventually became Congregation Ezrath Israel. As the neighborhood became increasingly connected to New York's entertainment community, Jewish performers found their way there. Sophie Tucker. Jack Benny. Milton Berle. Edward G. Robinson. Henny Youngman. Members of the Three Stooges. So many people from the entertainment world became associated with the congregation that it became known simply as the Actors Temple.
Eventually, the sanctuary took on another life as an Off-Broadway theatre. But it never stopped being a synagogue. And this is the part I can't get out of my mind. We cannot perform Undesirable Secrets there on Friday nights. Friday evening belongs to Shabbat.
Think about that. During the week, I will stand beneath the Star of David in that building and tell an audience about Jewish American soldiers who were singled out by the Nazis because they were Jews. I will become a Mexican American Army medic who suffered alongside them, tried to care for them, recorded their deaths, carried their names home and eventually broke decades of silence so the world would know what happened to them.
Then Friday will come. I will not perform. The theatre will become fully what it has always remained—a synagogue. A Jewish community will enter. Shabbat candles will be lit. Prayers will be spoken and sung. People will gather in a tradition that existed long before Hitler and survived everything he attempted to destroy. And when Shabbat has passed, Anthony and I will return.
There are moments in putting together a production when something simply feels larger than anything you could have planned. For me, this is one of them.
I don't want to overstate it. A building is a building. A theatre does not make a play important, and history doesn't suddenly become more truthful because of the room in which we tell it. But sometimes the place where we gather can remind us why a story matters. I think Actors Temple will do that for me every night.
There is another reason this particular theatre feels right. Undesirable Secrets has always worked best when there is very little distance between Anthony and the people listening to him. I don't want him safely contained behind an invisible wall at the edge of a stage. Anthony talks to you. He jokes with you. He gets angry in front of you. Sometimes he catches himself remembering something he probably wishes he hadn't remembered. At other moments, he seems to forget that you are there at all.
And something has happened repeatedly when those performances end. People stay. They want to talk. Sometimes they ask about Anthony or Berga. Other times the conversation moves somewhere I never expected—to veterans, the Holocaust, trauma, prejudice, Latino identity, family, silence, memory, or a story someone in the audience has carried privately for years.
Over time I began to understand something. The play was ending before the conversation was. So during our four Sunday performances at Actors Temple, we are going to do something about that. We are calling it Beyond the Curtain: Theatre as a Force for Social Awareness.
After those performances, veterans, Holocaust survivors and educators, historians, journalists, scholars, artists and community leaders will gather with us to explore some of the questions Anthony's story leaves behind. Not to tell anyone what to think. Not to provide easy answers to questions that don't have them. But to listen to one another and discover where one person's story might connect with another's.
And once again, I find myself thinking about the building. More than a century ago, people created a place on West 47th Street where a community could gather. Generations later, that is exactly what we're hoping to do there.
I haven't walked through those doors yet. When I finally do, I'll be entering them as a historian who has spent years researching Anthony, as the playwright who tried to turn that history into theatre, and as the actor who will have to walk onto that stage alone and somehow become him again.
I imagine I will stop for a moment. I usually do when something matters to me. Then I'll walk onto that stage, look out at the room where Jewish families have prayed and generations of performers have gathered, and I'll begin with words I have spoken many times before: “Secrets—secretos—that have the power to make us keep our mouths shut, why do we keep them?”
I've said those words in Texas. I've said them in New Mexico. I've said them in Michigan, Illiniois, and New York. But I have never said them there. And when I finally do, I suspect I'll understand something I've been beginning to understand already.
Sometimes we choose the place where we tell a story. And sometimes it feels as though the story has been waiting for the place.
— Rudy
P.S. In another entry, I'll tell you more about Beyond the Curtain and some of the remarkable people who are beginning to gather around Anthony's story. For now, I wanted you to know something about the place where we'll all be gathering.
I have never stepped foot inside the Actors Temple Theatre.
There. I suppose that's an unusual way to begin an entry about the place where I will soon spend nearly a month performing Undesirable Secrets. But it's the truth. I haven't stood on its stage. I haven't sat in one of its seats. I haven't walked through the doors at 339 West 47th Street and looked up at the Star of David that has watched over that building for generations.
Not yet.
What I have done is spend a great deal of time lately learning about the place where I will be telling Anthony's story beginning February 25. And the more I learn about it, the more I find myself asking a question that has nothing to do with theatre bookings, contracts, schedules, or any of the other things that go into producing a play in New York.
Of all the theatres in that city, how did Anthony's story find its way here?
If you've been following The Diary, you're beginning to know me a little better, which is one of the reasons I started writing these entries in the first place. I'm a historian, playwright, author and actor, and much of my work has involved looking for people whose stories somehow slipped beyond the edges of the history most of us were taught. Anthony C. Acevedo became one of those people for me.
Anthony was a twenty-year-old Mexican American Army medic when he was captured during World War II. Eventually, he became one of approximately 350 American POWs sent to Berga, where they were forced into slave labor under horrific conditions.
But there is something important to understand about how those men came to be there.
The Nazis were looking for Jewish American soldiers.
At Stalag IX-B, Jewish American POWs were separated from the other prisoners. They were being singled out for something far worse. Ultimately, approximately 130 Jewish American POWs were sent to Berga along with other American prisoners the Germans had selected for the labor detail. Anthony was among those men.
That fact has always been central to Undesirable Secrets. It is one of the reasons Anthony's experience belongs within the larger history of the Holocaust. A young Mexican American medic found himself imprisoned alongside Jewish American soldiers whom the Nazis had deliberately identified and separated, and he witnessed what happened to them.
Anthony did something else. He wrote it down. He secretly kept a diary, recording what he witnessed and the deaths of men he could not save. He carried that diary through Berga and the Death March and eventually home to America. Then, for more than six decades, he carried something else. Silence.
I first approached Anthony as a historian and writer. Eventually, I wrote his biography. Then a screenplay. Then a play. Somewhere along the way, however, something changed. I stopped simply writing about Anthony and began portraying him. That has meant standing alone on stages in Texas, New Mexico and New York, trying to bring not only Anthony to life, but the men whose names he carried with him.
And now Anthony and I are headed back to New York. This time, to the Actors Temple. At 339 West 47th Street stands a building that has spent more than a century bringing together two worlds that are now central to my own life: Jewish history and the theatre.
The congregation dates to 1917 and eventually became Congregation Ezrath Israel. As the neighborhood became increasingly connected to New York's entertainment community, Jewish performers found their way there. Sophie Tucker. Jack Benny. Milton Berle. Edward G. Robinson. Henny Youngman. Members of the Three Stooges. So many people from the entertainment world became associated with the congregation that it became known simply as the Actors Temple.
Eventually, the sanctuary took on another life as an Off-Broadway theatre. But it never stopped being a synagogue. And this is the part I can't get out of my mind. We cannot perform Undesirable Secrets there on Friday nights. Friday evening belongs to Shabbat.
Think about that. During the week, I will stand beneath the Star of David in that building and tell an audience about Jewish American soldiers who were singled out by the Nazis because they were Jews. I will become a Mexican American Army medic who suffered alongside them, tried to care for them, recorded their deaths, carried their names home and eventually broke decades of silence so the world would know what happened to them.
Then Friday will come. I will not perform. The theatre will become fully what it has always remained—a synagogue. A Jewish community will enter. Shabbat candles will be lit. Prayers will be spoken and sung. People will gather in a tradition that existed long before Hitler and survived everything he attempted to destroy. And when Shabbat has passed, Anthony and I will return.
There are moments in putting together a production when something simply feels larger than anything you could have planned. For me, this is one of them.
I don't want to overstate it. A building is a building. A theatre does not make a play important, and history doesn't suddenly become more truthful because of the room in which we tell it. But sometimes the place where we gather can remind us why a story matters. I think Actors Temple will do that for me every night.
There is another reason this particular theatre feels right. Undesirable Secrets has always worked best when there is very little distance between Anthony and the people listening to him. I don't want him safely contained behind an invisible wall at the edge of a stage. Anthony talks to you. He jokes with you. He gets angry in front of you. Sometimes he catches himself remembering something he probably wishes he hadn't remembered. At other moments, he seems to forget that you are there at all.
And something has happened repeatedly when those performances end. People stay. They want to talk. Sometimes they ask about Anthony or Berga. Other times the conversation moves somewhere I never expected—to veterans, the Holocaust, trauma, prejudice, Latino identity, family, silence, memory, or a story someone in the audience has carried privately for years.
Over time I began to understand something. The play was ending before the conversation was. So during our four Sunday performances at Actors Temple, we are going to do something about that. We are calling it Beyond the Curtain: Theatre as a Force for Social Awareness.
After those performances, veterans, Holocaust survivors and educators, historians, journalists, scholars, artists and community leaders will gather with us to explore some of the questions Anthony's story leaves behind. Not to tell anyone what to think. Not to provide easy answers to questions that don't have them. But to listen to one another and discover where one person's story might connect with another's.
And once again, I find myself thinking about the building. More than a century ago, people created a place on West 47th Street where a community could gather. Generations later, that is exactly what we're hoping to do there.
I haven't walked through those doors yet. When I finally do, I'll be entering them as a historian who has spent years researching Anthony, as the playwright who tried to turn that history into theatre, and as the actor who will have to walk onto that stage alone and somehow become him again.
I imagine I will stop for a moment. I usually do when something matters to me. Then I'll walk onto that stage, look out at the room where Jewish families have prayed and generations of performers have gathered, and I'll begin with words I have spoken many times before: “Secrets—secretos—that have the power to make us keep our mouths shut, why do we keep them?”
I've said those words in Texas. I've said them in New Mexico. I've said them in Michigan, Illiniois, and New York. But I have never said them there. And when I finally do, I suspect I'll understand something I've been beginning to understand already.
Sometimes we choose the place where we tell a story. And sometimes it feels as though the story has been waiting for the place.
— Rudy
P.S. In another entry, I'll tell you more about Beyond the Curtain and some of the remarkable people who are beginning to gather around Anthony's story. For now, I wanted you to know something about the place where we'll all be gathering.