Confessions Of A Butterfly - Lion and Unicorn
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
WRITTEN and performed by Jonathan Salt, Confessions Of A Butterfly receives its world premiere at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre, where it runs from September 12 (previews from September 10) to September 29, 2012.
Confessions Of A Butterfly commemorates the anniversary of Janusz Korczak, hero of the Warsaw Ghetto and pioneer of children’s rights, who was murdered with the 200 Jewish children in his care in his orphanage in the Ghetto.
When the Nazis began the liquidation of Korczak’s area of the Ghetto, taking some 4000 children and 2000 adults, eyewitnesses tell of how he led the children out of the orphanage singing, heads held high, and in quiet dignity.
Sam Conway directs this one-man show.
Salt worked closely with the Korczak Archives in Warsaw, and with British Korczak expert, Sandra Joseph, and went to Poland to write the play.
In the spirit of Korczak’s philosophy, the set is being constructed by inmates of HMP Littlehey. Korczak was extremely concerned with the provision of justice and especially rehabilitation. He regularly visited the prisons of Warsaw, particularly those where Juveniles were detained. The basic design for the poster has also been created by a young offender.
One of the choristers of Kings College School in Cambridge, Tom Pickard, aged 11, has recorded the violin music used for the role of Abrasha, a child prodigy, who was in the orphanage. Abrasha’s story is just one of the individual stories told in the play.
The song sung by the children the day they left the orphanage for the last time has been recorded by students at Wheatfields School in St. Ives in Cambridgeshire.
Tickets: £15/£12 – available from the box office on 08444 77 1000 or online at www.ticketweb.co.uk.
Times: Tuesday to Saturday at 7.30pm, Saturday matinee at 3.30pm.