Producer Hopes Dark Tale Will Enlighten Audiences About WWII
Submitted by N.O.V.A.
Times Picayune 	10-9-1998


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Cathie Weinstein knows that a heavy drama set in the shadow of the Holocaust is about
as likely to succeed in New Orleans as nutria etouffee.

She doesn't care.

"My husband thought I was crazy," said Weinstein, the 52-year-old producer and sole
financial backer of "Kindertransport," opening this weekend at the Contemporary Arts
Center. "He figured out how much we could lose and he asked me if it was that important
to get this play to the public."

Evidently, it was.

Weinstein, a Roman Catholic whose husband, Alan, is Jewish, first found a blurb for the
play on the back of a script at an audition.

"I sent off for it, I read it and I loved it," she said. "Then I called (director-
designer) John Grimsley, because I knew this was his type of show. He read it and
really liked it. That was the beginning of it, and ever since then, it's been a
passion."

"Kindertransport," which premiered in the United States at the Manhattan Theatre Club
in 1994, takes its name from a program undertaken between 1938 and 1939 to smuggle
Jewish children safely out of Germany before and just after the outbreak of World War
II. The Movement for the Care of Children from Germany transported nearly 10,000
unaccompanied boys and girls between the ages of 4 and 16, placing them with families
in Britain, Paraguay and the United States. The parents of most of those children died
in Nazi concentration camps.

The show, which makes its Southern premiere at the CAC, tells the fictionalized tale of
one of those children, a young girl placed with an English family who assimilates
completely into her new culture and hides her origins from everyone, including her own
daughter. The story moves around in time, capturing the young refugee as a teen-ager
and as a grown woman.

Weinstein, whose theater background consists mostly of performing in musical comedies,
is a sophomore producer whose first effort was the 1990 Ricky Graham revue
"Storyville." She said she was deeply moved by the dark story of "Kindertransport" and
the characters who populate it. Though she's cognizant that Orleanians favor musicals
and home-flavor in their theater, she thought it important that the show have a chance
here.

Finding an audience is only the most recent of a series of challenges for the show, not
the least of which was finding a girl with the acting chops to play the role of young
Eva. When Weinstein watched 13-year-old Megan Langhoff in a Summer Stages production
this summer, she saw potential.

Director Grimsley had originally cast another girl in the pivotal role and had asked
Megan to understudy. Shortly after rehearsals began, the original Eva dropped out and
Megan was tapped to take over.

"At first, I was really excited," said the Lusher Extension eighth-grader. "And then, I
got really, really nervous."

Megan said she's learned about the Holocaust in school and prepared further for the
role by reading "The Diary of Anne Frank," the classic account of World War II as told
through the eyes of a youngster. She had never heard of the Kindertransport before
joining the cast, and was astonished when she read the script.

"All those kids look so brave to me," she said. "I don't think I could ever do
something like they did. I'd be really afraid."

Weinstein believes that sense of fear and vulnerability will come through, both to
audiences familiar with the Holocaust and the Kindertransport and to those with less
knowledge. She hopes that, despite the play's somber tone, it will strike a chord with
others as it did with her.

"It's a very emotional story," she said, "and I guess I'm at a time in my life when I'm
emotional."