HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES

Review by Celia Ipiotis

Scrapbooks frame memories long forgotten, or in the case of the excellent Here There Are Blueberries performed at New York Theatre Workshop reveals dominant, but rarely viewed communities.

When Karl Hocker (Scott Barrow) discovered old photos documenting his father working at a concentration camp, he contacted the Holocaust Museum. Did they want historical documentation of their executioners? Surprisingly, this had never before come up. Obviously, one does not want to humanize the Nazis, yet the contrast of families living happily around the concentration camps is shocking, riveting, chilling and icily informative.

At first, the librarians–Kathleen Chalfant and Nemuna Ceesay are hesitant, but the evidence is shockingly compelling. After much deliberation with the museum administration  they agreed to accept and decode the historic materials. With them, archivists were better able to connect the dots  between the captors and the captives.

Based on a true story, images of young, fresh, contented families picnicking on the grounds, refreshing themselves in the river and eating in homestyle fashion on long tables belied the jarring contrast to the people held in the concentration camps.

By effectively projecting the old black and white photographs on the back wall (projection design by David Bengali), the conversation  supported the visuals that delivered you inside the tale of two realities.

Constructed much like a documentary by its creator and director, Moises Kaufman, and based on the acquisition of the Hocker album of 116 photographs by the Holocaust Museum, Blueberries was  tautly written by Kaufman and Amanda Gronich. Produced by NYTW and Tectonic Theater Project, Blueberries sheds light on the camp’s infrastructure and the way information was tightly limited to “need to know.” This knowledge clamp on the inner workings of the camp meant many of the associates only had access to their individual, tiny bits of information. 

Whether or not they were cognizant of the horrors surrounding them, well, it’s hard to believe these atrocities did not echo somewhere in their eyes.

EYE ON THE ARTS, NY — Celia Ipiotis