Kingston, NY – “November 12, 1932; My Dear Martin: Back in Germany! How I envy you! Although I have not seen it since my school days, the spell of Unter den Linden is still strong upon me -- the breadth of intellectual freedom, the discussions, the music, the lighthearted comradeship. And now the old Junker spirit, the Prussian arrogance and militarism are gone. You go to a democratic Germany, a land with a deep culture and the beginnings of a fine political freedom…”
So begins the correspondence between a Jewish art dealer living in San Francisco and his former business partner in Katherine Kressman Taylor’s Address Unknown. The work became an immediate social phenomenon and literary sensation when it first appeared in Story magazine in 1938. Published in book form a year later, it was banned in Nazi Germany, and called “the most effective indictment of Nazism to appear in fiction” by The New York Times Book Review.
On November 17, 2002, just over 70 years after the date on the letter, TheaterSounds brings this story to the stage in a reading directed by Nicola Sheara and featuring Wallace Norman, Stephen Bradbury, and Ken Thompson. The moral is as important now as it was in 1938; as Publishers Weekly said, reviewing the book in March 2001, Address Unknown “serves not only as a reminder of Nazi horrors but as a cautionary tale in light of current racial, ethnic and nationalist intolerance.”
ABOUT ADDRESS UNKNOWN:
Address Unknown by Katherine Kressman Taylor, will be read on Sunday, November 17 @ 3:00pm, at UUCC, 320 Sawkill Road, Kingston, NY. The reading is directed by Nicola Sheara and features Wallace Norman, Stephen Bradbury, and Ken Thompson. Admission is free.
ABOUT THEATERSOUNDS:
Dedicated to the concept that the mind is the best stage, the TheaterSounds playreading series brings both classic and new plays, performed by professional actors, to the Hudson Valley. TheaterSounds has no budget constraints, no restrictions on scenery, costumes, or props, because all of these things are created in the imaginations of the audience. For more information about TheaterSounds, contact Artistic Director Nicola Sheara at 845-657-6303, or by email.
