Nicole J. Burton

FRED & FRIEDA Premiere!

2010-04-19T21:18:54Z

The April 2010 production of FRED & FRIEDA at the Greenbelt Arts Center was a glorious success thanks to fabulous, sold-out audiences. Watch for news here on its next production.

Washington Informer - The Reluctant Warrior of Fred & Frieda

2010-04-15T23:02:19Z

Beautiful Washington Information article by Malcolm Barnes about Black Holocaust liberator William S. Keyes and my new play. Check out the photos.

FRED & FRIEDA Performances

2010-04-11T15:56:31Z

FRED & FRIEDA will premiere at the Greenbelt Arts Center on Thursday, April 15-18, 2010.

Show times are Thursday, April 15 at 10:00 am, Friday, April 16 at 10:00 am and 8:00 pm, Saturday, April 17 at 8:00 pm, and Sunday, April 18 at 2:00 pm.

The Thursday and Sunday matinees are sold out but unclaimed seats will be sold 10-15 minutes before the shos to the waitlist, so if you'd like to try your luck, please make a reservation at 301-441-8770 and come to the theater at your chosen performance.

We're also talking to two theaters about a future Washington, D.C. production. Please email us at nicole@nicolejburton.com if you'd like to hear about future performances of FRED & FRIEDA.

"Strange Fruit to the Nth Degree"

2010-03-28T18:02:40Z

That's how Fred Cephas in FRED & FRIEDA describes what he saw at Orhdruf concentration camp on April 4, 1945, when his 761st Tank Battalion smashed through an electric fence. It was a scene so horrific that hardened combat soldiers fell to their knees and vomited.

We can't comprehend 42 million dead from Nazism, or 30 million dead from Stalinism, or 55 million dead from Maoism, but we can grasp the life of a single young girl saved. "You save a life, it's as if you've saved the whole world." (Talmud)

To tell this story, we focus on one liberator and one survivor, revealing their intertwined story in the presence of a son and a granddaughter. Stories untold are stillborn offspring but stories shared are fertile progenitors of peace.

FRED & FRIEDA, April 15-18, 2010. Reservations and information at Greenbelt Arts Center.

Why I Wrote FRED & FRIEDA

2010-02-26T16:26:55Z

Here's a video clip explaining why I wrote my play FRED & FRIEDA.

Of course, there are a thousand other reasons but often a play begins with a single moment that won't leave you alone. This was my moment.

Birthing a Play

2010-02-25T02:45:50Z

We write plays at home in the quiet of our offices. But even when we've finished writing, they're not born until we hand them to someone else - a group of someone elses - and they send us away and make it their own. Fred & Frieda's been in rehearsal for three weeks now (delayed by the snows). My director kindly but firmly asked me to stay away until the cast had had a chance to gel and work together on their roles. On Monday, I'll attend my first rehearsal.

Already, the actors have asked probing questions that take me by surprise. How could I not know this or that about my characters? How could I not know how to pronounce all these foreign words I'd included? Could Frieda's son be using a cell phone instead of a land line? Exactly when does the action move from the synagogue flashback to the Berlin apartment? Bringing the play to actors is bringing the play into the world that wants to meet it. I am not the only midwife, and I am not God.

What will happen when Fred reunites with Frieda? We can read the words of the script but to experience the play, we have to go to the Greenbelt Arts Center on April 15-18, 2010. Come keep me company at the birth of the play.

Auditions for My New Play, FRED & FRIEDA

2009-12-21T16:18:33Z

Audition Notice
Sheilah Crossley-Cox will direct Fred & Frieda, a new play by Nicole Burton, to be performed at the Greenbelt Arts Center April 15 through 18, 2010. This play offers challenging roles - a reunion between a Holocaust survivor and the Black G.I. from Patton's Third Army who rescued her from a concentration camp. Greenbelt Arts Center, one of Washington's most notable community theaters, celebrates its 30th anniversary this season.

Auditions
Tuesday, February 2, 7:00 - 9:30 pm
Wednesday, February 3, 7:00 - 9:30 pm

Main Roles to be Cast
Frieda Horowitz, 67, concentration camp survivor and music teacher
Michael Horowitz, 49, Frieda’s oldest son and CEO of a container board business
Fred Cephas, 71, WWII veteran, 761^st Tank Battalion, and retired high school teacher
Lisa Brown, 19, Fred’s granddaughter, computer science major at Howard University

Supporting Roles

Frieda and Fred play themselves at all times.
Zeyde, Mrs. Goldstein, White soldiers, Nazi soldiers, Black soldiers, Bus Driver, and Waiter roles can be multicast in whatever way seems appropriate with available talent.

For casting details, call Sheilah Crossley-Cox, 410-884-0777 or email partello72@yahoo.com

The Gifts of Adoption Reunion: Courage & Acceptance

2009-11-28T23:34:35Z

On Nov. 19, I spoke about adoption reunion at the Washington Ethical Society. They're a great group. The talk, posted on the archives, was well received with interesting comments afterward from many members of the adoption constellation.

http://ethicalsociety.org/article.php?id=119

Expose Emotional Silence So Wounds Can Heal

2009-11-21T14:14:31Z

I'm moderating a literary panel on "Darkness and Light" tomorrow at the Mishkan Torah Synagogue Book Fair. I think this statement, intended for Vietnam vets, resonates for those of us in the adoption constellation. Kind of heavy but that's darkness for you.

"The Last Field Dressing" by Mike Hastie, US Army Medic, Vietnam 1970-1971
Excerpted from U.S. House of Representatives Hearings on the Aftermath of the Vietnam War

Above and beyond all things considered, learn to forgive yourself. I don't care what you did or didn't do, try to forgive what you've considered the unforgivable. For there will simply come a day when you will finally understand that there is absolutely nothing else left to do. Bring loving people into your life, because you cannot forgive yourself alone. If this was possible, you would have done so a long time ago. Expose emotional silence, so your wounds can finally be healed. It takes time to heal, so give yourself that precious gift. Let the self-inflicted guilt die, instead of you.

Adoption Videos: We are the Witnesses

2009-10-06T00:49:21Z

Adoption videos are hitting YouTube like crazy. Not just personal video stories but professionally produced videos about adoption reform. The American Adoption Congress has produced a set of four short videos. The newest ones are Adoption Reunion and Adoption and Family. The first ones they released especially touch my themes in Swimming Up the Sun, Adoption & Truth and Birth Mothers Never Forget.

At the American Adoption Congress conference this spring, I saw two fantastic new movies about adoption reunion, Jean Strauss' For The Life Of Me, which was so affecting it had the whole ballroom - men and women - crying; and Zara Phillips' lyrical Roots: Unknown. Both videos are available for purchase and have trailers on YouTube.

Adoption videos and movies are a great development for the adoption reform movement. Seeing and hearing adopted people speak their truth carries the same potency as seeing soldiers testify about war. Once you see us and hear us, you understand that we're the witnesses.

Open Adoption

2009-09-07T14:17:33Z

Here's a thoughtful post about open adoption, which is adoption best practice: http://tinyurl.com/nts3qm

Happy Labor Day!

The Girls Who Went Away

2009-07-23T00:48:10Z

I don't know where my mother went when she was pregnant with me. She was 23, as was my father; they'd gone to high school together. She'd been at Art College and returned to give birth at Nottingham City Hospital. Social Services didn't know about me till after I was born, which indicated that I was a "concealed" pregnancy - "concealed" meaning that she didn't tell anyone in her family that she was pregnant. We stayed in the hospital together for a week, then went to a mother and baby home for two weeks. Then she left and I stayed. When I was six weeks old, my new parents collected me.
I'm reading an amazing book, The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler. Being sent away wasn't my mother's experience exactly. And we were English, not American, but the evocation of the era (1950s and 1960s), the lack of birth control for single people, the rigid social conventions that damned the girls and excused the boys for being sexual, all that is part of my mother's story.

Adoption and Trust

2009-04-15T01:26:46Z

Trust is a huge issue for all of us in the adoption constellation.

Adoptive parents must trust that their children will accept them as their "real" parents, even as these children search and reunite with their original families. Adopted people must trust that their universe won't explode again and that they won't be "sent back to the orphanage." And birth parents, especially our mothers, must trust that all will work out before, during, and after reunion and that they won't be shamed again for doing their best at the time of relinquishment.

The Memoirist's Dilemma

2009-03-04T01:32:58Z

It's one thing to reveal our own lives and feelings, yet another to do the same for our loved ones. In publishing Swimming Up the Sun, I've encountered hard feelings from close quarters. Unknowingly, I "outed" my people. I thought I'd prepared folks: changing names and occupations, giving them the manuscript to preview before publication, being open about my intentions. No difference. Parts of my family - people I really love - are angry and have sent me to the doghouse, where it's quiet. And chilly. Of course, being rejected is an adopted person's nightmare. But when I mull the alternatives, what should I have done? Remained silent? Written a novel or a play? There's nothing wrong with fiction, but nothing wrong with truth either, fairly told. Meantime, I send blessings to all and hope time will heal the wounds of commission.

Birthfathers Grieve Too

2008-12-30T01:59:00Z

Detroit filmmaker Joan Mandell recalled shooting the stories of birth mothers and fathers as part of a campaign to help teens become more aware of the effects of unwanted pregnancy. "The stories were so powerful, especially those of birth fathers. I'd always assumed that the men, who had no legal rights whatsoever, also had no feelings. Not true. Like the birthmothers who were often coerced into giving up their children to closed adoption, the birth fathers rememberd and grieved, in their own ways." Adoption activist Mary Martin Mason, author of Out of the Shadows: Birthfathers' Stories, helped arrange the Mandell interviews. "The adoption agency in Minnesota that helped us find the participants took control of the footage," said Mandell. "I wish I could get access to work with it. The stories were moving; many years later, they still haunt me."