A new Piccolo Spoleto theater production telling the story of a local figure and her family transforms an event as vast as the Holocaust into an intimate exploration of memory, identity and generational legacy.
On the Other Side is based on the true stories of two Holocaust survivors as told through the eyes of their daughter, Anita Zucker. Zucker is a philanthropist and CEO of family-owned holding company InterTech Group, and the production also focuses on her life in addition to her parents’.
The piece will be performed on May 29 and 30 at Cannon Street Arts Center.
The production, first performed last year by Charleston Southern University, is not a typical theatrical narrative with scenes and dialogue. Instead, the story of Zucker and her parents is told through narration, dance and vignette, said director Thomas Keating, a theater professor at CSU.
Zucker has frequently spoken in Keating’s classes about her parents’ survival story and how they shaped her success. Those stories inspired Keating’s creative approach.
“I saw the action of her stories about her family come to life in my head – envisioning it as a play or theatrical event,” Keating said. “The resilience that Anita’s parents, Rose and Carl, showed through all of their struggles is what really drew me in.”
Keating proposed the idea for a theatrical interpretation to Zucker, who agreed to be interviewed about her life in greater depth. Keating collaborated with CSU students to write the script.
Zucker said she is honored by all the research and the work the cast and crew did to share her family’s story with audiences.
“It has so much meaning for me, and it certainly brought me to tears when I saw the whole show,” she said. “It was just beautifully done for something so difficult to comprehend and understand.”
CSU alumna and co-director Drew Heineman choreographed the piece. The unique presentation required a different approach to the story.
“We started by reading through articles about the Zucker family and selected pieces of the story that we could tell,” Heineman explained. “It was a lot of bouncing ideas off of each other and then the cast would improvise those ideas.”
The choreography required co-director Heineman to reconsider the way she approached dance, she said.
“I would think, ‘What does grief look like as dance?’ Not ‘What does grief look like in a dancer?’” she said. “In other words, letting the movement be the emotion instead of the cast moving as if they feel the emotion.”
Costume designer Chloe Lovelady said On the Other Side changed her approach as well.
“My brain had to switch from this mentality of ‘Everything has to be perfect and beautiful and must not stray from the original vision!’ to simply ‘How can the costumes support the actors in the stories they’re telling?’” she said.
On the Other Side opens at Ms. Rose’s, a West Ashley restaurant owned by Zucker’s company and named after her mother, Rose Mibab Goldberg. The real Ms. Rose’s Fine Food and Cocktails will close on May 30 after more than a decade in business.
Keating said the play asks the audience to remember the Holocaust and what people are capable of — both good and evil.
“While this is an uplifting story with a ‘happy’ ending, there is still work to do in reminding people not to forget,” he said.
IF YOU WANT TO GO:
On the Other Side runs May 29 and 30 at 7:30 p.m. at Cannon St. Arts Center.
The run time is roughly one hour, and there is no intermission. Admission is $20.
Cristina Reid is an arts journalism and communications graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
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