‘Etty’ Opens at off the WALL Productions (Fri., 4/21/23)

ETTY by Susan Stein. Presented by off the WALL productions. April 21 – 23. 

Etty Hillesum was a Dutch Jewish author who wrote about her religious awakening and the hardships of Jews in Amsterdam during WWII’s German occupation. Off the WALL Production’s ‘Etty,’ is a one woman show about the writer by Susan Stein. (photo: copyright Ricardo Barros)

Etty, a one-person play by New York theater artist Susan Stein, re-creates the story of a remarkable woman who has been called an adult counterpart to Anne Frank. Esther “Etty” Hillesum was, like Frank, Jewish and living in Amsterdam when the Nazis invaded. She too kept a diary that was later published, in book form, after her death in a concentration camp. But the parallels end there. During the Nazi occupation, Etty Hillesum never went into hiding. She was in her twenties at the time, highly educated and keenly inquisitive. Her writings reflect a young woman living a full and somewhat chaotic life, while searching earnestly for a spiritual grounding and her rightful place in the world—a search greatly complicated by the terrors she witnessed, as the campaign to eliminate the Jews closed in around her. Stein’s play, drawn from Etty’s diary and letters she wrote, has been acclaimed as profoundly moving. Off the WALL productions first presented Stein performing Etty for Pittsburgh-area audiences in 2019. Now, courtesy of off the WALL, Stein and Etty return. 8 p.m. Carnegie Stage, 25 W. Main St., Carnegie. (M.V.)

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