One-Woman Performance Tells Survival Story of Jewish Musican, Nazi Prisoner
September 26, 2007

Tacoma, Wash. - Claudia Stevens, visiting scholar in music at the College of William and Mary, is performing her original work called An Evening with Madame F at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 8, in University of Puget Sound's Kilworth Memorial Chapel.

The one-woman performance commemorates the "Night of Broken Glass" in November 1938, when Nazi storm-troopers and tens of thousands of loyal German party members arrested about 26,000 Jewish men and destroyed more than a thousand Jewish shops, homes, and synagogues.

An Evening with Madame F is inspired by the autobiography Playing for Time, which depicts the experiences of Fania Fenelon, a musician and cabaret singer who performed in the women's orchestra at the Auschwitz-Birkenau labor and extermination camp during World War II. With more than 100 national presentations, the play ranks among the most distinguished Holocaust-related public performances.

Stevens is trained as a pianist, musicologist, composer, and vocalist with degrees from Vassar College, University of California at Berkeley, and Boston University. She has written a dozen monologue plays for her own performance; several of these works-Madame F included-are inspired by her experience as the daughter of Holocaust survivors.

Stevens' Puget Sound performance is sponsored by the Catharine Gould Chism Fund; School of Music; Humanities Program; Spirituality, Service and Justice; the Jewish Student Organization; and the Gender Studies, Foreign Languages and Literature, Religion, and Theatre Arts departments. The event, which will be ASL interpreted, is free and open to the public.

Directions to the University of Puget Sound campus, Kilworth Chapel, and information on parking are available on the Web site at www.ups.edu/directions.xml.

Editor's Note: A print quality photo of Claudia Stevens is available on the University of Puget Sound Web site at www.ups.edu/pressphotos.xml.

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