A year after Gabrielle Robinson was born, her father died in World War II, an Austrian-born pilot shot down in his German plane over England. So the young girl turned to a gent she called Api, her grandfather.
âI had the happiest years of my childhood with him,â she recalls of his empathy, his hope, his respect for nature and his steady affection through Germanyâs meager post-war years. âHe meant everything to me.â
She never pondered that Api could have supported the Nazisâ atrocities. Heâd served as a military doctor in exchange for a scholarship that allowed him to study and become an eye surgeon, but that didnât require party membership.
Willamette Week
The need for strong, independent local journalism
is more urgent than ever. Please support the city we
love by joining Friends of Willamette Week.
The Holocaust Is Refracted Through a Family’s History in the Audio Play “The Berlin Diaries” Art that is about its own creation risks becoming claustrophobic, but The Berlin Diaries is expansive and funny. HOT MIC: Michael Mendelson and Miriam Schwartz voiced all the characters in The Berlin Diaries. (ARTISTS REPERTORY THEATRE) Updated February 16 He who forgets what he cannot change is happy. Those words are spoken multiple times in Andrea Stolowitz s play
The Berlin Diaries, but not because she believes them. She repeats the quote so we ll have time to ask whether it s true. Does forgetting equal happiness? Or is it merely a mask that hides pain without ever healing it?
Willamette Week
The need for strong, independent local journalism
is more urgent than ever. Please support the city we
love by joining Friends of Willamette Week.
Get Inside: Nine Things to Do While Stuck Inside This Week Stream WW s Funniest Five Zoom Showcase, watch another Portland-based rom-com and vicariously visit Italy via the Tooch. Katie Nguyen, Funniest Five Winner 2021 (Thomas Teal) Stream: WW’s Funniest Five Showcase Every year, Willamette Week surveys the local comedy community to find the city s best comics. Usually, that leads to a live standup showcase held in a packed theater somewhere in town. Of course, that can t happen this year. But in Portland, funny never stops. So we re going digital. Bri Pruett, herself a finalist in the poll s inaugural 2013 edition, hosts the Funniest Five Class of 2021, who ll be coming to you live from their living rooms and doing some show-and-tell with their variation quarantine projects. It s the live incarnation of t
New audio drama explores family’s lost and found stories: ‘Berlin Diaries’ review
Updated Feb 10, 2021;
Posted Feb 10, 2021
Miriam Schwartz and Michael Mendelson voice narration and multiple characters in Berlin Diaries, the latest audio drama from Artists Repertory Theatre.Shawn Lee, Artists Repertory Theatre
Facebook Share
A family is a collection of stories passed down through generations. Naturally, some stories get lost through time, branch out and grow distant from each other. Sometimes an unimaginable catastrophe slashes off swaths of branches all at once. And sometimes it’s our own family members who end the stories, editing them out. Artists Repertory Theatre’s latest audio drama, “The Berlin Diaries,” grapples with what it means to lose the stories of your family and what it means to find them again.