“Six million people did not kill themselves.” This weighty and formidable phrase penned by Moises Kaufman and Amanda Gronich in their powerful play, HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES, will strike an eerie chord in your soul. Based on real events during the Holocaust, HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES tries to understand how such tragedy could have occurred in a civilized society. HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES was a 2024 Pulitzer Prize-nominated finalist for drama, as well as the focus of a top-rated CBS 60 Minutes piece by Anderson Cooper. The play also became the highest-grossing production in the 45-year history of the New York Theatre Workshop. Soon to go international, an upcoming tour launches in 2025 in London and Germany. To quote Tony and Emmy nominee author Kaufman, “The purpose of this play is to show in a very specific way that the people who did this were not raised to do this…they were people like you and me, and through a series of very specific things, they learned how to do it. I refuse to believe the Nazis are monsters. The moment you label them as monsters, you can separate yourself from them. These were regular human beings, which makes it all the more frightening.” In 2025, The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is proud to present HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES.
The Company of HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES – Photo courtesy of Tectonic Theater Project
When a mysterious album featuring Nazi-era photographs arrives at the desk of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum archivist Rebecca Erbelding, she and her team of historians are both confused and intrigued. As they begin to unravel the shocking story behind the photos, the album makes headlines around the world and ignites a debate that reverberates far beyond the museum walls. The play tells the story behind these images preserved in time and what they reveal about the perpetrators of the Holocaust – and about our own humanity. Questions of guilt and blame rub shoulders with everyday people engaging in everyday events in their everyday world. Co-author Gronich remarked: “The whole time we were writing, we felt survivors and victims and their families sitting on our shoulders, constantly…these SS officers are frolicking and having fun on their days off and eating blueberries, and just outside the frame is the killing of 1.1 million people…survivors who had actually been at Auschwitz when photos were taken…said, ‘You must tell this story.’”
The Company of HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES – Photo courtesy of Tectonic Theater Project
HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES is the intense true story of what happens when a mysterious album of photos taken in 1944/1945 arrives at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. For these are not the expected terrible photos the museum historians anticipated depicting the monstrous treatment of victims of the Holocaust. These are photos of people having fun, sunning in lawn chairs, eating bowls of blueberries. And interspersed in the many pictures of smiling uniformed men, teenaged girls recruited to do simple office work, or people celebrating and singing are a few surprises, including Mengele, the Doctor of Death, the creator of Auschwitz, the last commandant of Auschwitz, the largest extermination center in Europe, and his right-hand man, adjunct lieutenant Hoecker – who, as it turns out, put together the album to remember his happy days rubbing elbows with his military superiors at the infamous death camp.
Jeanne Sakata – Photo courtesy of Tectonic Theater Project
But what was going on just outside the photo’s frames? As the Nazi organization broke down the multiple steps needed to murder an entire people on the path to genocide – so that each individual in charge of each step could say that he didn’t really know what was going on and, besides, was only following orders.
Skillfully and compassionately helmed by director Moises Kaufman, theater critics have been positive in their praise. Evan Henerson of Broadway World opined, “A beautiful and significant new play. A high-stakes detective story.” Peter Marks of the Washington Post described the play as “a gripping expose of the depraved human inclination to convince oneself that nothing is amiss when everything is in fact horrifically, monstrously wrong.” The talented cast – including Scott Barrow, Nemuna Ceesay, Delia Cunningham, Luke Forbes, Barbara Pitts, Jeanne Sakata, Marrick Smith, Grant James Varjas, Anna Shafer, and Sam Reeder – do a superb job of digging into what was driving the perpetrators while keeping the suspense slowly rising to horrible proportions. And a surprising and revealing revelation as the story closes. Every member of the design team also deserves congratulations, especially David Bengali’s projections, which bring the photos to life. This is a gripping must-see production which should be on the agenda for each of us.
HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES runs through March 30, 2025, with performances at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays; at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. on Saturdays; at 7 p.m. on Sunday 3/15 and at 2 p.m. on Sundays 3/23 and 3/30. The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is located at 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90210. Tickets start at $49. For information and reservations, call 310-746-4000 or go online.
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