Tolerance Week 2016 – February 29 – March 6

We are thrilled to announce a very special collaboration for Tolerance Week, 2016.  By special arrangement with the Sioux City Community Theatre, the main event at the Sioux City Orpheum Theatre will be opening night of the Children’s Production of “I Never Saw Another Butterfly” on Wednesday, March 2, 2016.

As part of Tolerance Week, subsequent performances at the Sioux City Community Theatre will be March 3-6 with free admission to the public.

During World War II, 15,000 Jewish children were sent by the Nazi Gestapo to Theresienstadt, a former military camp also known as Terezin. This concentra-tion camp was a stopping place for children and adults on their way to the gas chambers in Auschwitz. When Terezin was liberated in 1945, there were only about 100 surviving children there. These surviving few gathered the writings and artwork created by them, as well as others who had lived at the camp, to put together a published book entitled I Never Saw Another Butterfly.

Using this book, Celeste Raspanti wrote the play version of I Never Saw Another Butterfly in 1971 as an imaginative creation of one of the surviving children; Raja Englanderova. In this play, Raja, with the help of a teacher named Irena Synkova, shares her story of life within a concentration camp.