6 • wildcat weekend
community • FRIDAY, March 7, 2014
Holocaust remembered through arts
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Kevin Reagan
hen pianist and School of Music professor Paula Fan traveled to China to teach music to children, she met an elderly gentleman named Herbert Zipper. Zipper’s unwavering positive attitude and ever-present smile left a lasting impression on Fan. She didn’t know it at the time, but Zipper was a Holocaust survivor. Decades later, and after Zipper’s death in 1997, Fan is still asking herself how a man like Zipper remained so optimistic after enduring such tragedy. It’s questions like these that Fan and her associates at the Confluencenter Center for Creative Inquiry hope to answer at their “Creative Collaborations” presentation this Saturday at 11 a.m. As part of an ongoing series of presentations that mix and match different disciplines across the UA, “Creative Collaborations” examines various topics of interest to Fan and her scholastic partners. This month, Fan explores the experience of the Holocaust through the perspective of children in a presentation called “The Choiceless Choice.” “The question to me is, ‘Did the children see things differently than the adults?’” Fan said. Consisting of classical music, poetry and historical lectures, the presentation will take
courtesy of paula fan
Paula Fan (left) with Herbert Zipper (center) and her husband, John Denman (right), in China. After working together, Fan found out that Zipper was a Holocaust survivor.
place in the lower level of the UofA Bookstore. Fan will begin by playing a cycle of songs on a 1901 Steinway piano. The songs are lyrical adaptations of testimonies from actual children of the Holocaust. Sections
from “The Diary of Anne Frank” and “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” will serve as the inspiration for Fan’s repertoire. Fan said the idea for the presentation partly stems from her memories of Zipper,
who was an Austrian musician sent to the Dachau concentration camp in 1938. While taken prisoner, Zipper secretly put together an orchestra of musicians to play concerts in an abandoned latrine. He and his fellow prisoners would craft instruments together from pieces of wood and scrap metal. “Herbert’s sustaining lifeline was his commitment to music,” Fan said. Zipper’s story of survival would later be profiled in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Never Give Up.” As part of her research for the presentation, Fan met with a group of Holocaust survivors at the Jewish Family and Children’s Services of Southern Arizona to see if any of them chose music or art as coping mechanisms in their fight for survival in the way as Zipper had. “Nobody thought about music,” one of the survivors said. “We didn’t have the choice.” Fan says that she noticed the survivors were curious about her professional pianist career. While these men and women spoke of losing their childhoods to the Holocaust, none seemed to have lost their appreciation for beautiful things, Fan said. Like her friend Zipper, Fan observes, Holocaust survivors tend to make a conscious choice
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Arizona Repertory Theatre makes ‘Oklahoma!’ modern “It’s an opportunity for students to view a little piece of history, he Arizona Repertory but also to find it romantic and Theatre’s presentation sexy, because it really is,” Gurwin of “Oklahoma!,” which said. “As a director, I really tried to previews Sunday, make sure it has those elements promises to be modern involved in it. Just because it sounds like and exciting. some old Director musical doesn’t D a n n y mean there isn’t Gurwin, who a lot of romance. has appeared There’s a lot in multiple of humor. If Broadway people think shows, is it’s a creaky old acquainted show, they’d with the — Danny Gurwin, surprised weakening director be at how warm, interest of funny, silly and y o u n g e r audiences in traditional theater. romantic it is.” “Oklahoma!” helped mold the Gurwin has strived to bring out the modern aspects of the romantic comedy genre. The production that students can plot is a dramatic love triangle. Two men vie over the love of one relate to.
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Taylor Armosino
“It’s an opportunity for students to view a little piece of history.”
woman on a farm in Oklahoma, flanekd by a supporting ensemble of humorous friends. There have been two film adaptations of Oklahoma: one in 1955 and one in 1999. Rather than following a straight-line adaptation of one of them, Gurwin settled in the middle in order to create a unique setting. “The 1955 movie is very MGM Technicolor,” Gurwin said. “We decided not to go that route. The Hugh Jackman revival in 1999 was much grittier. We’ve kind of split the difference here. It has the joy and color of a Technicolor show, but some of the grit in the text and scenery and staging of a John Wayne movie. It feels like the Wild West, but it still doesn’t lose the classic musical style. We tried to combine the two ideas.” Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, arguably the best
courtesy of ed flores
Will Parker (Ryan Kleinman) and Ado Annie (Lindsey Mony) are caught in the final pose of their “All ‘Er Nuthin’” dance in the “Oklahoma!” production. The play will be featured at the UA Arizona Repertory Theatre from Sunday through April 6.
theater-writing partnership of the 20th century, wrote “Oklahoma!” It’s considered the most transformative production in theater history due its use of music. “The show pulled dance into the storytelling and was able to use every art form to tell one story,” Gurwin said. “This was
the first musical of its kind where the songs are part of the plot and further the plot as opposed to just being there for entertainment’s sake.” It’s a play that uses musical score to incite emotions in the audience, a novel concept back in
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