Newtown High School’s production of their fall drama, Letters to Sala, is set to open on Thursday, November 14. Performances will be staged in the auditorium of the high school, 12 Berkshire Road, with evening performances at 7 pm November 14 to 16 and a matinee performance at 2 pm November 17.

Tickets are $12 for adults, $10 for seniors, and $7 for students, and are available for purchase at the door before each performance.

Letters To Sala is a play and biographical drama that follows the true story of the survival of a young woman named Sala through wartime Germany and several labor camps in the Holocaust. Later in life, when Sala’s daughter and two granddaughters discover the letters she saved while in the camps, they rediscover history and all that she went through for themselves.

Letters to Sala was adapted into a play by Arlene Hutton, and is based on the book Sala’s Gift by Ann Kirschner. The book is an account of Ann’s mother Sala Kirschner’s experiences in the Holocaust, and is based on the collection of over 300 letters written by family and friends that her mother kept safe and eventually gave her.

The show is directed by NHS seniors Sadie Baimel and Parker Mauri, who are both extremely excited to direct the show together. They said that the NHS fall drama is typically student directed, and that the directors will pick the show. The students directing the fall drama are often seniors, and this year is no different.

Baimel is the one who ultimately chose Letters to Sala as this year’s fall drama earlier this summer. After having it recommended to her, Baimel said that, “I went home and read the script that I was lent ... and it just checked all the boxes and everything I wanted and was looking for in a show.”

Preparing and working for Letters to Sala has been a lot, Baimel and Mauri said, considering the number of people they are working with. This is the first time that either of them have managed a project of this scale.

One of the most difficult aspects of the directing process has been scheduling according to Baimel. She said she knew making sure that everybody is there when they need them to be would be difficult going into the project, but that she did not expect just how difficult it would be.

At the same time, the large number of people involved with the show is a part of why Baimel said that she chose it in the first place. Baimel said that she really wanted to do a show that could fit an ensemble because doing the fall drama as a freshman was how she made all of her friends. She stuck with NHS Drama ever since, and directing Letters to Sala is the culmination of her experience with NHS Drama so far.

Mauri is comparatively newer to NHS Drama, having only gotten involved some time around junior year. While this is one of the last things she gets to do with drama before graduating this spring, Mauri said that she is not that sad about it because “this is me getting back all the time I didn’t get with theater before.”

“[Baimel] had the experience of being a freshman and making friends with all the seniors. I may not have had that, but now I have the experience of being a senior making friends with all the freshmen and encouraging them,” Mauri continued. “So it’s kind of sad, but I’m more happy that I could do it at all, you know?”

An Important Show

NHS teacher Janice Gabriel, who has helped supervise the production, has been working on something special during the production of the show. She has been in contact with Hutton, the playwright of Letters to Sala, and Ann, the original author of Sala’s Gift.

While Gabriel has been the one primarily in contact with them, everyone had the chance to speak to them during a Zoom meeting on Monday, November 4. There, students could ask Ann and Hutton questions about the show, how they got to where they are now, and so on. Gabriel said that this is an incredibly unique experience for the students, and that she is lucky to have been able to stay in touch with both Ann and Hutton.

If everything goes as planned, they will attend a special performance of Letters to Sala on Friday, November 15 held during the school day for ninth grade Western Studies students.

Knowing that the playwright of the play and the author of the book, whose mom’s experiences are the basis of the play, does “put a little more pressure on everybody” according to Mauri.

“There are cast members in particular who are playing characters that the people we’re going to meet on Monday [during the Zoom call] either are, or have met, or are related to, which is so cool, but also kind of terrifying,” Mauri said during rehearsal on Friday, November 1.

It is Baimel and Mauri’s shared passion for theater that has led them to direct Letters to Sala together, and they both said they want to do justice to the source material despite the pressure they feel. The subject matter of Letters to Sala is especially important to both of them.

Baimel, who is Jewish, said that it is always important to remember the Holocaust and honor those that they lost. She added, “And especially right now with everything that’s going on all over the world, it’s so important that we remember that this is very real and that it can happen, and what that’s like for the normal person living now.”

Mauri said that it is important for people to remember that the Holocaust is not an isolated thing that happened, and that something that happened so many years ago can still affect people, their children, and their grandkids.

“I feel like there are some things that we don’t want to talk about because it’s hard, but we have to because it’s important, and this is one of them,” Mauri said.

Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.