silenced voices come to life in a new musical experience
LISTEN
"We will all be witnesses"
“We Will All Be Witnesses” is a demo of the title song from the show written by musical theater composer Adam Gwon (Scotland, Pa, Ordinary Days)
the concept
5 children. 5 diaries.
5 songwriting teams that bring their voices to life.
Each diary reveals one voice – one teenager coping with the impossible. But in the words they left us, they reveal one insurmountable truth: You may be able to kill us, but you can never destroy our spirit. These five stark accounts, set against a haunting, beautifully constructed song cycle, are a testament, and an inspiration to the best of the human soul.
5 children. 5 diaries.
5 songwriting teams that bring their voices to life.
Each diary reveals one voice – one teenager coping with the impossible. But in the words they left us, they reveal one insurmountable truth: You may be able to kill us, but you can never destroy our spirit. These five stark accounts, set against a haunting, beautifully constructed song cycle, are a testament, and an inspiration to the best of the human soul.
voices that must be heard
voices we must never forget
MOSHE FLINKER. RUTKA LASKIER. ÉVA HEYMAN. DAWID RUBINOWICZ. YITSKHOK RUDASHEVSKI.
These 5 children did not survive the war.
But their words did.
THE UNTOLD STORIES...
MOSHE FLINKER
Place of Death: Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Age: 15 years old
ÉVA HEYMAN
Place of Death: Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Age: 13 years old
DAWID RUBINOWICZ
Place of Death: Gas chambers of Treblinka
Age: 12 years old
RUTKA LASKIER
Place of Death: Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Age: 14 years old
YITSKHOK RUDASHEVSKI
Place of Death: Ponary Massacre, Lithuania
Age: 16 years old
MOSHE FLINKER
Place of Birth: The Hague, Netherlands
Place of Death: Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Age: 15 years old
ÉVA HEYMAN
Place of Birth: Oradea, Romania
Place of Death: Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Age: 13 years old
DAWID RUBINOWICZ
Place of Birth: Kielce, Poland
Place of Death: Gas chambers of Treblinka
Age: 12 years old
RUTKA LASKIER
Place of Birth: Gdańsk, Northern Poland
Place of Death: Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Age: 14 years old
YITSKHOK RUDASHEVSKI
Place of Birth: Vilnius, Lithuania
Place of Death: Ponary Massacre, Lithuania
Age: 16 years old
silenced voices, now heard
"We will all be witnesses"
“We Will All Be Witnesses” is a demo of the title song from the show written by musical theater composer Adam Gwon (Scotland, Pa, Ordinary Days)
the creators
Music & Lyrics
ADAM GWON (Music & Lyrics – Moshe Flinker) is a composer and lyricist whose musicals have been produced on six continents, in more than half-a-dozen languages. Off-Broadway: Scotland, PA (Roundabout Theatre – Drama Desk nomination, NYT Critic’s Pick), Ordinary Days (Roundabout Theatre, Keen Company revival – Drama League Award nomination), Old Jews Telling Jokes (Westside Theatre, NYT Critic’s Pick); Regional: String (Village Theatre), Cake Off (Signature Theatre – Helen Hayes Award nomination, Bucks County Playhouse), Cloudlands (South Coast Rep), The Boy Detective Fails (Signature Theatre), Bernice Bobs Her Hair (Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma); West End: Ordinary Days (Trafalgar Studios). His songs have been heard at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and more, performed by such luminaries as Audra McDonald, Kelli O’Hara, and Brian d’Arcy James. Honors include the Kleban, Ebb, Loewe, and Richard Rodgers Awards, Second Stage Theatre’s Donna Perret Rosen Award, Weston Playhouse New Musical Award, ASCAP Harold Adamson Award, and MAC John Wallowitch Award. Recordings include: Ordinary Days (Ghostlight Records), Audra McDonald’s Go Back Home (Nonesuch), The Essential Liz Callaway (Working Girl Records), Artists in Residence (Broadway Records), Over the Moon: The Broadway Lullaby Album (Entertainment One). Adam has been a fellow at MacDowell, Hermitage Artist Retreat, the O’Neill Music Theater Conference, and the Dramatists Guild.
GERALD STERNBACH (Music – Dawid Rubinowicz) has earned thirteen Ovation nominations (winning in 2006) and seven LADCC nominations (honored in 2007, 2008 and 2012). In 2015, he made his London debut – One Night Only with Mel Brooks, also performed in LA at the Geffen Playhouse – filmed for HBO. Also at the Geffen – Carrie Fisher’s one-woman show, Wishful Drinking. Other Southern California credits: LA Philharmonic debut (Hollywood Bowl 2005), pianist for Stephen Sondheim’s 75th Birthday Concert, conducting 20 shows for REPRISE, Grey Gardens, (associate conductor-LA premiere- Ahmanson), Sondheim on Sondheim (Southern California premiere,. an ASCAP event honoring Stephen Schwartz at the Wallis Annenberg, featuring Idina Menzel, Megan Hilty, Liz Callaway, Jordan Fisher and Andrea Martin. Other credits: associate conductor for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Merlin, and The Tap Dance Kid (all Broadway), Les Miserablés (LA premiere company), conductor- Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Song and Dance, (national tour-Melissa Manchester). He’s worked with the likes of Leslie Odom Jr, Marilyn Horne, Jennifer Hudson, Josh Groban, Sarah Brightman and Carol Burnett, Adam Lambert, Nancy Wilson, John Lithgow, and Judith Light; the ongoing pianist of An Evening with Groucho (with Frank Ferrante). As a songwriter and composer: the musicals Heartbeats (with Amanda McBroom), Club Mom and A Very Cherry Christmas (both with Elin Hampton) and Biting Broadway! (with Jordan Beck). His song (with Faye Greenberg) — “Mary” (a tribute to Mary Tyler Moore) was sung by Eric McCormack on the 2004 TV Land Awards — in the presence of the sitcom’s original cast. Lastly, Gerald has also been inspiring middle and high schoolers with musical theater—teaching at CSArts, San Gabriel Valley. Gerald is proud to be associated with this project honoring his Jewish heritage, roots stemming from Russia, Germany and Austria before WWI.
JORDAN BECK (Lyrics – Dawid Rubinowicz) is a lyricist and producer whose work has been performed from Australia to New York City. He is an alumni of the Johnny Mercer Songwriters’ Project where he was mentored by Craig Carnelia, Lin-Manuel Miranda & Lari White. With composer Jonathan May, he released an album entitled Cousins: The Songs of Beck & May featuring the vocal talents of Todrick Hall, James Snyder, Allie Trimm, David Burnham and more. An evening of their work was seen and streamed live from the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. as part of ASCAP’s Broadway Today & Tomorrow series. Their musical adaptation of Peter Pan was part of the ASCAP/DreamWorks Musical Theatre Workshop, and is now licensed regularly for productions around the globe. He has collaborated on various projects with several other notable composers including Jeff Thomson and Jason & Nolan Livesay. Jordan is currently writing the lyrics for Biting Broadway! A New Musical with his composing partner Gerald Sternbach and book writer John Blaylock, directed by John Tartaglia. Witnesses has long been a project he has dreamed of developing and doing so in this way with multiple songwriting teams. He is incredibly humbled to see it finally coming together with such an incredible group of fellow writers! Most importantly, Jordan is the proud father of two beautiful boys, Luke & Benjamin.
MATT GOULD (Music & Lyrics – Yitskhok Rudashevski) is a two-time Richard Rodgers Award winner (2012 and 2014) and Jonathan Larson Award winner. His musical Witness Uganda (aka Invisible Thread) written with Griffin Matthews, had its NY premier at 2econd Stage Theater and its world premiere at the American Repertory Theater at Harvard. His original musical Lempicka, written with Carson Kreitzer, premiered at the Williamstown Theater Festival in 2018 and will have its pre-Broadway tryout in La Jolla in summer 2022. Other works include The Family Project for LA’s Center Theatre Group and Twilight in Manchego (Directed by Tony Winner Billy Porter). Gould has written and arranged music for Playwrights Horizons and translated, adapted and directed Romeo and Juliet in Pulaar (Mauritania, West Africa.) Matt has performed around the world including Uganda, Mauritania, and Japan, and across the US. A graduate of Boston University’s College of Fine Arts, Matt is a frequent speaker and guest lecturer at schools and Universities. He is the co-director of UgandaProject but mostly just wants to be home with his husband and kid watching Sesame Street and walking the dogs. @FakeMattGould
CARMEL DEAN (Music – Éva Heyman) is an Australian-born, New-York based composer/lyricist, musical director, and arranger. Her compositional debut, Renascence, (with a book by Tony Award-nominee Dick Scanlan) was produced Off-Broadway by the acclaimed theatre company Transport Group, and subsequently won the 2018 Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best New Musical. Her song cycle Well-Behaved Women, about bad-ass, game-changing historical women, premiered at Joe’s Pub in January 2020 to sold-out performances, and recently received rave reviews for its production in Sydney, Australia. She has been commissioned to write a new musical with Mindi Dickstein (Little Women) for New Works Provincetown/Mark Cortale.
As a Broadway Musical Director, Supervisor and/or Arranger, Carmel’s credits include If/Then (starring Idina Menzel), American Idiot, Hands on a Hardbody, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. She is the Musical Supervisor/Arranger/Co-Orchestrator of the upcoming Broadway musical The Notebook (with a score by Ingrid Michaelson). Other credits include Music Direction for Fun Home at Sydney Theatre Company and Arranger/Orchestrator for the upcoming Mystic Pizza at Ogunquit Playhouse.
Other roles include Vocal Arranger for jam-band Phish and Trey Anastasio (Madison Square Garden; Las Vegas; Chicago’s Wrigley Field); performer with Green Day on the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards; and former musical director for Broadway legend Chita Rivera.
Carmel is a Fulbright Scholar, holds an MFA from New York University’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, and is a current member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Workshop.
MINDI DICKSTEIN (Lyrics – Éva Heyman) is an award-winning lyricist, librettist, and playwright. She is perhaps best known as the lyricist for the Broadway musical Little Women (MTI, Ghostlight Records), which has been performed worldwide, most recently in Japan, the UK, and across the US and Canada. She is currently writing lyrics for Benny & Joon, based on the MGM film, which had its World Premiere at the Old Globe in San Diego, East Coast Premiere at Paper Mill Playhouse. New works in development include Maiden Voyage, with composer Carmel Dean, commissioned by New Works Provincetown, and The Little Prince, a multimedia musical which will premiere internationally in 2022. Recent projects include book and lyrics for Trip, commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, and book for Toy Story – The Musical, for Disney. Plays include The Existential Gourmet (Jane Chambers Award) and Starving To Death In Midtown (Climate Change Theater Action). Mindi’s work has been developed at NAMT, Theatreworks Silicon Valley, Second Stage, The Women’s Project, Playwrights Horizons, Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, and The Goodspeed Johnny Mercer Colony. She has received a Larson Foundation Award, Massachusetts Artists and New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting Fellowships, a Second Stage Constance Klinsky Award for Excellence in Musical Theatre, and a PEN International New Playwright Award (selected by Wendy Wasserstein). She was an Oscar Hammerstein Fellow at the NYU Graduate Musical Theater Writing program, where she received her MFA and now serves on the faculty.
ANNA K. JACOBS (Music & Lyrics – Rutka Laskier) is a Jonathan Larson Award-winning composer, lyricist, and book writer. Her stage works include POP! (Yale Rep, Pittsburgh City Theatre, Studio Theatre; book/lyrics by Maggie-Kate Coleman), Teeth (NAMT, O’Neill; co-book/lyrics by Michael R. Jackson), Anytown (George Street Playhouse; book by Jim Jack), Harmony, Kansas (Diversionary Theatre; book/lyrics by Bill Nelson), Echo (Musical Theatre Factory), and Stella and the Moon Man (Sydney Theatre Company/Theatre of Image; play by Richard Tulloch, co-composed by Adrian Kelly). She has also written for film, penning the screenplay for The Real Gemma Jordan (University of Nebraska-Lincoln; music/lyrics by Rob Rokicki), and the music and lyrics for Kaya: Taste of paradise (NY Film Academy; screenplay by Jerome A. Parker). Currently, Anna is collaborating with playwright Anna Ziegler on a stage musical commissioned by Barbara Whitman Productions and Grove Entertainment about the life and disappearance of child prodigy author, Barbara Newhall Follett. Anna is the recipient of a 2018 Eric Salzman Award for New Music Theater Composition and the 2016 Billie Burke Ziegfeld Award. She holds an MFA in Musical Theatre Writing from NYU-Tisch, and is a former Sundance Fellow and Dramatists Guild Fellow. www.annakjacobs.com
Director
J. SCOTT LAPP
J. SCOTT LAPP (Director) has been working in the theatre business for over 30 years and is an award-winning Director with over 100 productions under his belt, having worked across the United States as well as Internationally. He is an alumnus of the Directors Lab West, a proud member of the SDC and a 2011 SDC Emerging Artist. He is also the Artistic Director of The California Center for the Arts, Escondido. Recent projects include serving as the Associate Director on the world premiere West End production of The Prince of Egypt at the Dominion Theatre slated to re-open in July 2021. He directed the critically acclaimed production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at Farmers Alley Theatre in Michigan. Other recent projects include a reading of a new musical adaptation of Noël Cowards Hay Fever, and a production of Freaky Friday at Moonlight Amphitheater He has various projects in different stages of development including the world premiere of Witnesses slated to open in the Summer of 2022. Associate/Assistant Directing credits include Broadway: Bonnie & Clyde; International: The Prince of Egypt (West End, Fredericia Teater); National Tour: Murder for Two, Xanadu (La Jolla Playhouse, National Tour); Off-Broadway: Murder For Two (New World Stages, Second Stage); Regional: The Prince of Egypt (TheatreWorks Silicon Valley), Rain (Old Globe), Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Paper Mill Playhouse, La Jolla Playhouse), Into the Woods (Old Globe), Secondhand Lions (5th Ave), Somewhere in Time (PCS), Good People (Old Globe), A Room With A View (Old Globe), Somewhere (Old Globe), Bonnie & Clyde (NY Workshop, La Jolla Playhouse, Asolo Repertory), Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin (La Jolla Playhouse), and workshops of The Prince of Egypt, Upstaged, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Somewhere in Time, The John Birch Society Musical, Secondhand Lions, Leap of Faith, A Room With A View, Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, The Weathermen and Restoration. Selected directing credits include International: Murder for Two (Japan, Calgary), Regional: Freaky Friday (Moonlight Amphitheater), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Farmers Alley), Minnie’s Boys (Musical Theatre Guild), The Bridges of Madison County (Public Theatre San Antonio), Godspell, Disenchanted, First Date (Prima Theatre), Little Women, Peter and The Starcatcher, Chess, Carousel, Spring Awakening, Urinetown the Musical (Barn Stage Company), Sweeney Todd (North Carolina Summer Rep), Hairspray, First Date (San Diego Musical Theatre), Murder for Two: Christmas Edition (Bucks County), Murder for Two (NC Theatre, The Cape Playhouse, Saint Michael’s Playhouse, Red Barn Theatre, Farmers Alley). He is a recipient of Noel Craig, PAMTA, Inland Theatre League, Patté, National Youth Theatre, Billy & Director’s Choice awards.
Orchestrations
GERALD STERNBACH
GERALD STERNBACH (Music – Dawid Rubinowicz) has earned thirteen Ovation nominations (winning in 2006) and seven LADCC nominations (honored in 2007, 2008 and 2012). In 2015, he made his London debut – One Night Only with Mel Brooks, also performed in LA at the Geffen Playhouse – filmed for HBO. Also at the Geffen – Carrie Fisher’s one-woman show, Wishful Drinking. Other Southern California credits: LA Philharmonic debut (Hollywood Bowl 2005), pianist for Stephen Sondheim’s 75th Birthday Concert, conducting 20 shows for REPRISE, Grey Gardens, (associate conductor-LA premiere- Ahmanson), Sondheim on Sondheim (Southern California premiere,. an ASCAP event honoring Stephen Schwartz at the Wallis Annenberg, featuring Idina Menzel, Megan Hilty, Liz Callaway, Jordan Fisher and Andrea Martin. Other credits: associate conductor for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Merlin, and The Tap Dance Kid (all Broadway), Les Miserablés (LA premiere company), conductor- Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Song and Dance, (national tour-Melissa Manchester). He’s worked with the likes of Leslie Odom Jr, Marilyn Horne, Jennifer Hudson, Josh Groban, Sarah Brightman and Carol Burnett, Adam Lambert, Nancy Wilson, John Lithgow, and Judith Light; the ongoing pianist of An Evening with Groucho (with Frank Ferrante). As a songwriter and composer: the musicals Heartbeats (with Amanda McBroom), Club Mom and A Very Cherry Christmas (both with Elin Hampton) and Biting Broadway! (with Jordan Beck). His song (with Faye Greenberg) — “Mary” (a tribute to Mary Tyler Moore) was sung by Eric McCormack on the 2004 TV Land Awards — in the presence of the sitcom’s original cast. Lastly, Gerald has also been inspiring middle and high schoolers with musical theater—teaching at CSArts, San Gabriel Valley. Gerald is proud to be associated with this project honoring his Jewish heritage, roots stemming from Russia, Germany and Austria before WWI.
Scenic Design
MATTHEW HERMAN
BOOK ROBERT FREEDMAN READ MORE
the JOURNEY
CCAE Theatricals is taking this new show from conception, through a workshop process, all the way to its opening night with the CCAE Conservatory in the summer of 2022.
spring 2021
Hiring process of Creatives, demo recorded, work underway on song-writing
summer 2021
Script & Score are completed, planning underway for Fall workshop including casting of the 5 children
fall 2021
First workshop presentation. Work continues on revisions for a full rehearsal process in Spring.
spring 2022
Rehearsals begin for Conservatory production
summer 2022
“Witnesses” world premier in CCAE Conservatory production presented to the public
get involved
You can help make this incredible theatrical opportunity a reality. Learn about all the ways you can get involved with “Witnesses”.
Expand your organization’s reach while supporting ground-breaking, original art as a “Witnesses” sponsor.
For more information, please contact Joset Grenon, jgrenon@artcenter.org.
Support CCAE Youth Conservatory by making a contribution to the “Witnesses” Project.
Your contribution will be matched 1:1 by The Conrad Prebys Foundation, doubling your impact!
GIVE TODAY
Learn about opportunities where you can put your skills to work as a volunteer, and help make “Witnesses” a reality.
For more information, please contact Joset Grenon, jgrenon@artcenter.org.
thanks to our supporters
David T. & Dorris E. Staples Foundation
