Eye - 22 July 2011
From the Edinburgh Fringe to unexpected outreach
Quaker School to appear at the Fringe
The story of a family who fled Nazi-occupied Austria is being brought to life on stage by students from a Quaker school at the Edinburgh Festival in August.
We Didn’t Have Time to be Scared is an original musical written by Andrew Geha, a teacher at the Friends Academy, a Quaker school in New York, and will be performed by twenty-two students and alumni from the school at the Friends Meeting House in Edinburgh.
Andrew explained the background to Eye: ‘The musical is based on the real life diary of Inge Fischer, who was ten years old when Germany annexed Austria in 1938. The show is about how Inge and her sister, Lucy, fled Austria with their parents, travelled to England, Trinidad and, eventually, the United States.’
A year after starting her diary as a young girl, Inge and her younger sister, Lucy, had their world turned upside down when troops from the Third Reich invaded Vienna and the Nazi regime took control of the city. They were fortunate to escape. A version of Inge’s diary was held by her sister Lucy’s daughter, Lisa Waldstein. Lisa is a teacher at the Friends Academy and she showed her aunt’s diary to Andrew and a collegue Tracey Foster.
Andrew, who has based the musical on the diary and on interviews with Lucy and Inge Fischer, said: ‘We read the translation and started brainstorming the possibilities. The diary entries ranged from amazing descriptions of very intense moment to entries about the normal day-to-day life of an eleven year old. Almost every scene is based on an entry or moment referenced in the diary.’
In April 2011 Inge’s diary was donated to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.
Lucy Fischer will be in Edinburgh during the show’s run at the Festival. Her presence will add an extra power to the event. The musical opens at Venue 40, the Quaker Meeting House, on 8 August and runs until 13 August. Eye hopes that Friends will support the show.
Jesus on a sign
Eye spied another unusual representation of the crucifixion this week in Russell Square, London. Far less prominently displayed than Gill Ledsham’s ‘jumping Jesus’, most people seem to walk past this sign without even noticing its religious significance. Jesus is with us, whether we notice it or not.
Unexpected outreach
As Friends across the country peruse the pages of the latest Friend, Eye is contemplating the ways in which Quakers conduct outreach almost by accident.
A subscriber to the Friend wrote in saying: ‘I knew a Friend who came to Quakers quite late in in life. I asked him what had brought him to Friends. He told me how he held a senior position at an airbase that had a regular Quaker camp at its gates. He saw it as a part of his job to talk with the campers about why they were there – and he was struck by their integrity.’
This heartwarming tale gives Eye hope that our witness in the world is noticed and does make a difference somewhere.
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