Interview with Wendy Kout
Wendy Kout is a film writer whose work in movies and television is renowned. She always brings a sense of humor to her writing, whether in comedies or dramas. Wendy also is adept at creating fully developed Jewish characters in her writing. Doing this with real life characters in Survivors was an act of love and appreciation for what these people had experienced. Wendy shared with us that she wanted to bring their real stories to the play. It could have been overly heavy and understandably painful. It could have been mired in the past, but Wendy anchored the stories in the past and then brought vitality to the characters and showed them as young and full of life as they were when everything unraveled in their world. She talked about the importance of connecting what happened during the Holocaust to today. She pointed out the hateful thread that wrapped around the lives of the victims and the survivors alike and pulled it into today. Anti Semitism, hate speech, and discrimination are sadly alive and well today. Wendy wanted that to be clear for the young people to understand and beware of in their lives and to remember the Holocaust was an awful example of how those things got out of control.