Silent Witnesses

They were kids. They were pretty. They were hidden “on the outside,” satellites spinning in their own private orbit, until decades later they land on one doorstep in Los Angeles. Here, they tell their stories for the first time. They called themselves phantom siblings. Silent Witnesses no more.

Decades after World War II, a group of women meet moderated by a therapist. The women have one thing in common: all of them, including the therapist, survived the Holocaust as children. Expected to quietly assimilate and not dwell on the past, they remained silent for years. Even the camp survivors, wrote them off: “they were kids, they were hidden; nothing really happened to them.” Now, they begin to tell their stories for the first time. The boundaries between therapist and friend and co-survivor all disappear.

Stephanie Satie has been writing and performing solo plays since the 1980's. Silent Witnesses is a solo play based on interviews with child survivors of the Holocaust which Satie has performed at a variety of venues including the Odyssey Theatre and Bossier Arts Council's East bank Theatre. The play is written and performed by Stephanie Satie and directed by Anita Khanzadian. Satie and Khanzadian received the Collaboration Award from Women in the Arts and Media Coalition in 2013 for this project and Silent Witnesses won the 2014 award for Best Documentary Script from the United Solo Festival in N.Y. Satie also teaches literature and writing at California State University, Northridge.

6:00 pm Doors Open

6:30 pm Showtime