A Weekend with Etty: Bethnal Green
About this event
You're warmly invited to "A Weekend with Etty": two performances of Susan Stein's one-woman play adapted from the diaries and letters of Etty Hillesum.
Etty Hillesum is a young Jewish Dutch woman writing diaries in Amsterdam during the Second World War. In these diaries and later, her letters from Westerbork concentration camp, Etty bears witness to what it means to be human and commits herself to a radical choice: not to hate, even as she opens her heart to the horrors unfolding around her. She wrestles to write the life she is living — her loves, her work, her humor, her spirituality, and her transformation. She was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of 29.
In February 1942 she writes: "I really see no other solution than to turn inward and to root out all the rottenness there. I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we have first changed ourselves. And that seems to me the only lesson to be learned from this war". Etty asks us not to leave her in Auschwitz but to have a tiny little bit of a say in what she hopes will be a new world.
Etty, the one-woman play told in Hillesum’s own words, opens us to the moment of her becoming, just as the world around her is coming undone. The second act asks the audience to join the conversation, fostering dialogue on human rights, resistance, and personal responsibility.
Please join us, and share the attached invitation with your friends.
Saturday August 1st - 5:00pm - Sacred Heart Church, Wimbledon (Lounge), SW19 4LU
Sunday, August 2nd - 5:00pm - St Benet's Chaplaincy, Bethnal Green, 327A Mile End Road, E1 4NT
Suggested donation: £10 (cash or card accepted at venue)
Please register here