Details

'When Naava Piatka's mother died unexpectedly, the cancer that killed her was not the only secret that the legendary actress, singer and comedienne Chayela Rosenthal had kept from her daughter. Naava was about to discover her mother's incredible past as a Holocaust survivor and 'Wunderkind of the Vilna Ghetto'. 1942. Vilna, capital of Nazi-occupied Lithuania. In the ghastly conditions of the overcrowded ghetto, a shy petite sixteen-year-old Jewish girl transformed herself into the vivacious singing star known as the 'Wunderkind of the Vilna Ghetto.' In the tiny ghetto theatre she told jokes and performed in musical shows written by her lyricist brother Layb, bringing music and comedy into the bleak lives of fellow detainees. After Layb was murdered, Chayela secretly wrote down his songs and plays in a little blue book which, after her own death, would eventually be handed down to her daughter. Sifting through family documents, listening to her father's anecdotes and contacting other survivors who remembered her from her days as a child star, Piatka pieced together the remarkable beginnings of Chayela's career and created her one-woman musical show 'Better Don't Talk'. Blending captivating personal narrative with humour and song, Naava plays both herself and her larger than life mother and is accompanied on piano by her own daughter Jackie, who is the same age now as Chayela was in the ghetto. The title comes from 'Yisroilik', one of Layb Rosenthal's songs in which a typical ghetto kid - a spunky Jewish street orphan - says 'Why dwell on pain and sorrow? Better don't talk!' It is precisely because her mother didn't talk that Piatka is now compelled to break the silence and sing the songs she never heard her mother sing and share the stories she was never told.

Creatives/Company

Author: Naava Piatka

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2003 (1 listings)