A FORMER Kidderminster College student is returning to Wyre Forest with a “powerful” theatre performance telling the stories of Holocaust survivors.
Cate Hibbert, director of new theatre company Voices of the Holocaust, was born in Kidderminster, studied performing arts at the town’s college and was a member of the Stourport Three Arts Guild.
Her theatre company, which was set up less than a year ago, is already working with world-leading Holocaust scholars and touring nationally.
The performance of Fragile Fire and The Fool of the Warsaw Ghetto, featuring the last surviving drut’syla (a traditional Yiddish storyteller) Shonaleigh, whose grandmother survived the Holocaust, will take place at Stourport Civic Centre next Thursday.
Before setting up Voices, Cate spent 17 years as a head of drama before having a year off to further her education with two masters degrees.
It was her politically-active father that inspired her to become interested in human rights and a workshop on using theatre to teach the Holocaust at a drama conference that gave her the idea for Voices.
She said: “By university, I was realising that theatre was a really powerful means to an end. It was a logical next step to become a drama teacher to affect hearts and minds and make a difference.”
Cate believes theatre is a good way to deal with the most difficult issues.
She added: “How do you create plays about the worst that humans can be and what happens when human beings fail one another but still create something that audiences actually want to see and leave them wanting to see more, to know more.
“That’s the key to Voices’ work, once our audiences see us they always do.”
The two stories being told in Stourport are Fragile Fire, the story of Mordechai Anielewicz and the young uprisers, who fought back against the Nazis despite certain death, paired with Shonaleigh telling one of her Grandmother’s fairytales from Auschwitz – The Fool of the Warsaw Ghetto.
They are described as stories of hope, faith, sacrifice and survival, resistance, the power of love and the strength of the human spirit.
Cate added: “It was Stourport Three Arts Guild and performing there that changed my life. To see Fragile Fire and Shonaleigh on the stage where I did my very first play (outside of school) over 30 years ago is really exciting. It’s great to be coming home.”