Kristalnacht

January 24th, we announced our intentions of bringing Miep Gies story to stage (MIEP: THE JOURNEY BEGINS). We had positive reactions from our followers and excitement and a new buzz from the creative community which we have never witnessed towards us since we started our creative journey.  It was a great feeling to know that everyone was backing this project with their full support.  We had a lot of meetings with potential producers, set designers and the amazing Artistic Director of Falling Doors, Sarah Van Parys who was going to hopefully direct this piece. With a story like Miep Gies, and in order to do her story justice, demands a lot of studying and researching. The whole team, including myself were ready for the huge task at hand and were excited to get started. It was different, it was new which motivated us to move Likeminded onto the next level.

Upon our extensive research, we uncovered horrific and unforgivable things. It was that bad, it made me have to stop because it effected me that much I couldn’t sleep. This has to be one of the hardest projects I’ve been part of. All we came across was hurt, suffering, pain and the fear of the unknown polluting every page, every account we read, it was full of it. It was heartbreaking to see how humanity can go that low. Two months into our research and we were literally done. Deflated. Ready to give up until that one night that changed my direction of the project.

The night, consisted of a dream I had. A very vivid dream that I can only describe as a sign. My dream was about a play we put on about Kristallnacht.

Kristallnacht, ‘the night of broken glass’ was a pogrom against Jews living in Germany. November 9th , 1938 is widely seen as a violent turning point in Nazi Germany’s assault on the Jews. Synagogues were set on fire, store windows were smashed and Jewish homes broken into in cities, towns and villages across the Third Reich. Historians view Kristallnacht as a prelude to the Final Solution and the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust.

 While not going into much detail because I don’t want to let the cat out the bag and reveal too much but within this dream, I witnessed a body of work to build on for a play to perform. The next day I rallied the team together about the possible idea for a play to move straight ahead with it and put Miep back and solely concentrate on this powerful project. Finally, we all agreed this would be a more powerful story to portray and a very important one to tell as this was a glimpse of what was to come. We see Kristallnacht as a prequel to Miep, which introduces the world that we are trying to create for her story.

We have great ideas in the coming months for the promotional strategy of Kristallnacht which will be our biggest one yet. The angle that we are trying to do has never been done before within a promotional campaign.

We want to get you, the audience to join us on this journey from the start. It’s not just a show we are putting on, we are education you of what life was like for a Jewish citizen as the months go by. We want to take you to that fateful night in November 1938. You will be living the story every step of the way.

 Within the promotion, great opportunities for writers and actors will be available to be a part of this momentous project. We will release more information about this in the coming weeks. This is a team effort and will be mine and Ashley’s first collaborative work together since we started Likeminded.  We have a solid foundation on which to build and the first draft of Kristallnacht is nearly complete. Be sure to keep an eye out on updates in the following weeks.

Words by Christopher Woodward
Edited and references by Andrew Smith
Images by Joe Harper