Arts & Entertainment

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Sala's Story

able firsthand view
of the human drama
For nearly 50 years, Sala Kirschner kept
that unfolded among
a secret. After surviving five years of Nazi
Jewish victims forced
work camps, she came to America as a
to work as slave
war bride and raised a family without ever laborers.
speaking of her wartime experience. Her
This rare collection
daughter, Ann, grew up in a happy and
of letters, postcards,
safe home and became a scholar, writer
photographs and
and a mother herself but always wondered official documents — part of the per-
about the black hole in her
manent collection of the
mother's past.
New York Public Library's
It was not until Sala
Dorot Jewish Division
(now 83) was scheduled for
— will be on view at the
heart surgery in 1991 that
University of Michigan's
she showed her daughter a
Harlan Hatcher Graduate
priceless collection of more
Library North (first floor
than 350 letters and a diary
off of the North Lobby)
from her years in the Nazi
in Ann Arbor. The exhibit
work camps, documents
runs Feb 2-March 27.
that she had kept carefully
A special program,
hidden in a cardboard box.
titled "Whose Story Is
She had risked her life to
It: How an Archive Was
preserve these letters, hiding
Transformed into an
them from Nazi guards dur-
Exhibition, a Book, a
ing lineups, handing them
Play and a Documentary
Ann Kirschn er and her
off to friends, throwing them mother, Sala
Film," featuring exhibi-
under a building, even bury-
tion curator Jill Vexler
ing them, but always managing somehow
and Ann Kirschner, Sala's daughter and
to take them with her from camp to camp. author of Sala's Gift: My Mother's Holocaust
Scholars have declared this collection
Story (Free Press Trade Paperback; 2007),
to be one of the great treasure troves of its will be held on Wednesday, Feb. 13, at 7
kind. The collection provides a remark-
p.m. in the Gallery of the Harlan Hatcher

Graduate Library, Room
100 North (off of the
North Lobby).
Library hours are 10
a.m.-9 p.m. Mondays-
Thursdays, 10 a.m.- 5
p.m. Fridays-Saturdays
and 1-9 p.m. Sundays.
The exhibit will be
open on Saturday, Feb. 23, from 1-4 p.m.
only and will be closed on Sunday, Feb.
24. Special hours during spring break are
10 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Thursday, Feb.
25-28.
For more information on the exhibit, go
to www.letterstosala.org. For library infor-
mation, go to www.lib.umich.edu or call
(734) 936-2367.

Mamet In Motion

Jewish playwright, author, essayist,
screenwriter and film director David
Mamet's works are known for their clever,
terse and arcane stylized phrasing known
as "Mametspeak."
He originally made his name with his
creations for the stage: Sexual Perversity in
Chicago (1974), which examines the lives
of two men and two women in the dat-
ing pool in the Windy City, and American
Buffalo (1977), a look at the ways in which
three petty crooks plan to steal a coin col-

lection from a wealthy man in the name of
"good business:"
Glengarry Glen Ross (1984), for which
he won his Pulitzer Prize, is a damning
representation of American business
practices, and Speed-the-Plow (1988)
gives a savage view of the underside of the
film industry. As a screenwriter, Mamet
received Oscar nominations for The
Verdict (1982) and Wag the Dog (1997).
In Mamet's play Oleanna (1992), a
male college professor and his female
student sit down to discuss her grades
and become the participants in a mod-
em reprise of the Inquisition. Harmless
remarks and Socratic dialogue turn into
an examination of the mechanisms of
communication and power in academic
circles — between teachers and students,
social classes, men and women.
Breathe Art Theatre Project performs
a "cross-border" production of Oleanna
8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, Feb. 1-16,
with a 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 10, matinee,
at the Furniture Factory, 4126 Third
St., in Detroit and 8 p.m. Friday and
Saturday, Feb. 22-23, at Mackenzie Hall,
3277 Sandwich St., in Windsor. $15-$20.
(313) 831-1939, (519) 255-7600 or www.
BreatheArtTheatre.com.
Catch more of Mamet when the Abreact
theater group presents American Buffalo 8
p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, Feb. 22-March

FYI: For Arts related events that you wish to have considered for Out & About, please send the item, with a detailed description of the event, times, dates, place, ticket prices and publishable phone number, to: Gail Zimmerman, JN Out &
About, The Jewish News, 29200 Northwestern Highway, Suite 110, Southfield, MI 48034; fax us at (248) 304-8885; or e-mail to gzimmerman@thejewishnews.com . Notice must be received at least three weeks before the scheduled event.
Photos are appreciated but cannot be returned. All events and dates listed in the Out & About column are subject to change.

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Nate Bloom

Special to the Jewish News

Romantic Comedy

The likable and handsome Paul
Rudd, 38, has turned in a string of
CD charming movie and TV performanc-
CD
es since his debut
in the 1995 film
(11)
Clueless – includ-
ing his wonderful
comic roles in
Knocked Up and
The 40-Year-Old
Virgin. Rudd, who
is
always happy
Lake Bell
to talk about
his Jewish background, grew up in
Kansas, the son of English Jewish
immigrant parents.
Rudd stars in the new film comedy
Over Her Dead Body as a skeptic
who falls in love with a genuine psy-
chic (Lake Bell). Hampering their
romance is the ghost of his late
fiancee (Eva Longoria). Bell, 28, a
tall beauty, is Jewish on her father's
side. She's best known for playing

ali

B10

January 31 • 2008

Sally Heep on TV's Boston Legal. The
pretty Lindsay Sloane, 30, has a big
supporting role as Rudd's sister. The
film opens Friday, Feb.1.

Cable Talk

On The Millionaire Matchmaker, air-
ing 10 p.m. Tuesdays on Bravo cable
channel, Patti Stanger, the founder
of an elite Los Angeles matchmak-
ing service, tries
to help rich men
find their perfect
female match.
Stanger, 46, is
a self-described
"third-genera-
tion" matchmaker
– her mother
Patti Stanger
and grandmother
made matches out of their New
Jersey synagogue as a "mitzvah."
Stacy London, 38, is best known
as the co-host of the TLC cable show
What Not to Wear, in which regular
people get fashion makeovers. The
new season of the weekly show airs
new episodes 9 p.m. Fridays. London

also hosts the
new TLC talk
show Fashionably
Late with Stacy
London at 10 p.m.
Fridays.
Stacy's father
is Herbert
Stacy London
London, a politi-
cally very con-
servative author and New York
politician and head of the Hudson
Institute think tank. Her mother is
a retired banker of Sicilian descent
and is not Jewish. Stacy describes
her childhood home as "much more
Jewish than Italian."
She is well educated, with a double
degree in philosophy and Germanic
studies from Vassar and says she is
not nearly as conservative as her
father.

Appointment TV

In Treatment, which began airing
on HBO Monday, Jan. 28, is based
on a super popular award-winning
Israeli TV series of the same name

(Be'Tipul in Hebrew). As in the Israeli
original, the HBO series, airing 9:30
p.m. weekdays for nine weeks, fol-
lows a psychotherapist (Gabriel
Byrne) as he meets weekly with his
patients Mondays-Thursdays and
goes to see his own therapist, played
by Dianne Wiest, on Fridays.
Thursday night episodes fea-
ture a married couple – Josh
Charles (Sports
Night), 36, and
Embeth Davidtz,
42 – getting
therapy. Davidtz
is best known
for her touch-
ing portrayal of
Helen Hirsch,
Josh Charles
the brutalized
Jewish maid,
in Schindler's List. Davidtz, who
was not born Jewish, married her
husband in a Jewish ceremony, and
they are raising their son, Asher.
Byrne's children with ex-wife
actress Ellen Barkin also are being
raised Jewish. ❑

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