‘A Shayna Maidel’ Opens New Season at ITC

The Illinois Theatre Center. (PHOTO SUPPLIED)

Park Forest, IL—(ENEWSPF)— The Illinois Theatre Center of Park Forest opened its 34th season Friday as the only professional Equity theatre in the South Suburbs. The opening production is the Holocaust drama A Shayna Maidel by Barbara Lebow. The production runs through October 11.

A Shayna Maidel is a memory play in that moves back and forth in time, from New York City in 1946, to flashbacks of Poland immediately before and after the Holocaust. Mordechai Weiss and his 4 year old daughter Rose come to America in the 1920’s, before the Nazis come to power in Europe. Rose’s older sister Lusia and their mother plan to join them later, but illness prevents them from traveling. They are eventually sent to a concentration camp. After the war, Lusia comes to New York to join her father and sister.

The New York Times described A Shayna Maidel as “…a powerful, deeply affecting portrait of a family, which conveys the aftermath of the Holocaust through a poignant, imaginatively conceived examination of one divided family’s experience… a tribute to the sustaining power of family and to man’s indominability.”

Real life sisters Angela and Jacquie Beyer make their ITC debuts as Lusia and Rose. They are joined by another newcomer, Samuel Hicks, and by ITC veterans Bernard Rice, Judy Rossignuolo-Rice and Jeny Wasilewski. The production is directed by Etel Billig.

A SHAYNA MAIDEL runs Friday, September 25 through Sunday, October 11. Performances are Wednesday through Saturday evenings at 8 PM, and Sundays at 2:30 & 7:30 PM. Tickets are priced at $21 on Fridays & Saturdays, $19 all other times. There is a $1 discount fore students & seniors (65+). The Illinois Theatre Center is located in Downtown Park Forest, at 371 Artists Walk (off Indianwood Blvd, adjacent to Village Hall.) For tickets, call 708-481-3510.