About the Play:

Forever Young: A Ghetto Story is a full-length comedic drama by Darrah Teitel. At the height of the Second World War, a group of youths plot what will become known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the enduringly inspiring act of Jewish resistance in German-occupied Poland. Forever Young is set within the context of the Holocaust, but written for today, with a clear message about how to fight for the changes we need.

Forever Young: A Ghetto Story is set in 1943 in the notorious Warsaw Ghetto, the few square kilometres of the Polish capital where food is scarce, illness is rampant and curfews are enforced by Nazis prone to shooting random people on the streets when they're not actively rounding them up and sending them by train to gas chambers as part of the "final solution." Amid these horrors, a group of young revolutionaries whose families have been killed are trying to organize a resistance. They plot what will become known as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, "one of the most significant occurrences in the history of the Jewish people," according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Izzy, Eden, Joshua and Christian, and Felicia, all from very different backgrounds with different – often clashing – affiliations and beliefs, are trapped in a room under hopeless circumstances. Their task is clear: they must come together to form a new military organization against the Nazis and convince their elders that the Ghetto must fight. The cadre of brilliant, brave and often hilarious characters express their passions and desires as fiercely as they fight for their right to exist in the face of annihilation. Forever Young uses humour to engage the audience in a story of youth, revolution, and betrayal in Poland, 1943 as these youths rise to face their oppressors and change the world.

Forever Young: A Ghetto Story premiered in 2022 at the Great Canadian Theatre Company’s Irving Greenberg Theatre in Ottawa. The performance opened on the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht, The Night of Broken Glass, which marked a series of violent anti-Jewish pogroms in November of 1938.

Cast: 2 female, 3 male

What people say:

"The dizzying diversity of Jewish life in the pre-Holocaust era is one of Hitler’s least-known victims. Chasms of class, ideology, religion and values divided Jewish communities that effectively lived in different worlds until the Nazis shoved them together in ghettos, trains and camps. Darrah Teitel revives and literally rejuvenates the fierce debates that lit up the Jewish world before the great darkness. Their passion and edgy sparkle will dance in your head for days." — Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein

"A play dense with philosophy, political theory, revolution, debate, discussion and unsettling history." — The Slotkin Letter

About the Playwright:

Darrah Teitel is a Canadian playwright and lifelong social activist whose resume includes working as a legislative assistant on Parliament Hill. She is a graduate of The University of Toronto and The National Theatre School of Canada’s Playwriting program. She is the winner of several playwriting awards, including the 2011 Canadian Jewish Playwriting Award and the 2007 Canadian Peace Play Prize, and her plays have received nominations for Dora, Betty Mitchell, Rideau, and META Prizes for Outstanding New Plays.