About the Plays
In August, 1969, when Ronald returned to the United States after summer study at
Yad Vashem Institute, Jerusalem, Israel, his immediate ambition was to write a one-
Volume One: Beyond the Abyss
The three plays in Beyond the Abyss are all set in present-
Thematically, because some of the
major characters in the three plays are Jewish and some are not, the dramas argue
that individuals who manage t o confront the moral abyss do so as a consequence of
their ethical dispositions rather than their religious discipline; i.e., right-
Interestingly enough, as Ronald worked his way into the through the thematic requirements
of each play, his theatrical techniques changed, evidenced by the numerical reduction
in roles: the plays in Beyond the Abyss were written for casts as large as thirty-
Adam’s Daughter
A dream play, Adam’s Daughter explores Natalie’s conflicted emotional and intellectual
mindscape. An American Jew and an actress in her mid-
Growing up, Natalie is witness to the ways in which American Jews paid her father
homage, tributes that too often cause her to feel that she is an observer rather
than a participant in his life. It is only years later, when she and a friend, Maggie,
are raped one winter night in New York City, that Natalie finally faces up to questions
about her own personal strength as she confronts the prospect of taking care of Maggie,
whose emotional wounds from the violence—like Adam’s—do not heal.
By the end of the play, Natalie accepts that while she is surrounded by the ghosts
of her father’s past, with effort—perhaps with courage—she can achieve her own “survivor’s”
identity by incorporating her whole life into her on-
[Thirty-
Common Ground
The Florida New Play of the Year, 1999-
The second play in Beyond the Abyss, Common Ground begins as a play within a play
and ends as a play about itself.
The first act takes place in a small Chicago theatre where six secondary age school
girls—three of whom are Jews and three of whom are Catholics, all of whom attend
the same Catholic girls’ school—are rehearsing a one-
The second act of Common Ground is a performance of “The School” which, in its historic
and moral themes and psychological conflicts, raises questions about courageous and
cowardly behavior. Thus, the Common Ground audience sees the painful story of pre-
[Eight female speaking roles; one male speaking role (from off stage)]
Seder
Act one of Seder begins in 1990 with four of the five Poliker sisters, ages 59 through
67, arriving from their homes in South Africa, Chile, Scotland, and Israel, to share
Seder at the Chicago home of the second eldest of the five women. The significance
of the meal is that the last time they were all together for Passover was fifty years
before when they were living with their parents in Poland. However, just as the
family was sitting down to celebrate the meal on that fateful day in 1940, their
Jewish village was overrun by Nazi Gestapo forces. Fortunately, Rabbi Poliker had
arranged for his daughters to be secreted away in three different directions in the
hope that some of them might survive. Tragically, the parents did not. Thus, motivated
by a desire to memorialize the father and mother and to reaffirm their relationships,
the women prepare the meal. However, just as it is about to begin, the second youngest
sister, Sarah, tormented by years of pent-
Act two begins before dawn of the next morning as, one by one, the
sleepless sisters emerge from their rooms. As they do, each of the other four women,
in turn, bares her own private pain, relating what happened to her during the war.
For the audience, each story is so dreadful, each account so moving—from Ceil’s
tale of helping Jews to escape to Chile, to Helene’s and Eva’s story of rape and
murder and death among the Polish resistance fighters—that there is no way to judge
one tale more or less horrific than any other. Ironically, while sharing the pain
each has harbored for fifty years threatens to undo them as a family, it is also
only by sharing their stories that they can exorcise their pain and reunite at the
Seder table, free to begin again the ritual words that acknowledge their heritage
and celebrate the sisterhood and their survival.
[Five female roles.]
Volume Two: The Chronicles of Zion
While all three plays in Beyond the Abyss are set in modern-
The Attic Room
The Attic Room signals a change in focus from plays that portray the direct impact
of the Holocaust on Jewish society to plays that portray the more indirect if no
less profound impact of the Holocaust and anti-
A dream play, The Attic Room is set in a building that once housed the headquarters
of the Jewish Committee in the Warsaw ghetto, but which no longer exists. However,
because dreams often times express more than waking reality, the play enters into
realms of the imagination that require that the audience accept a reality that is
painful beyond words.
The Attic Room centers around two characters, Adam Czerniakow and Rachael Wyze. Adam
Czerniakow, a real historical person, was Chair of the Jewish Council in the Warsaw
ghetto from 1939 to 1942. A labor activist before the war, he was put in charge
of administering the ghetto imposed on Poland’s Jews, a task no person could have
accomplished, for in reality the Germans had determined to annihilate the Polish
Jews either there in Warsaw or in the death camps to which thousands were deported.
Czerniakow eventually committed suicide, for while he could, under unimaginable
duress, face deporting adults to their deaths, he simply could not do the same to
the children the Nazis demanded he round up and hand over. Thus, the “attic room”
is Czerniakow’s personal hell where he pours over maps, documents, and lists that
defined Jewish life in the ghetto, performing what he calls his task, an act of eternal
contrition.
Then, without warning, a young fictional character, Rachael Wyze, interrupts his
routine. An Israeli journalist whose mother escaped the Warsaw ghetto as a small
child without her family, all of whom perished after her flight, Wyze, who has read
Czerniakow’s diary notebooks, has come ostensibly to learn more about the difficulties
Adam faced while running the ghetto. However, in reality, she has come to confront
Adam with her mother’s story. In the process of doing so, she tells her own story
as well. Thus, Rachael enters her own moral dungeon, for while serving in the Israeli
army in the occupied West Bank, she was an accessory to the killing of an innocent
Palestinian girl. Only an artful cover-
As the play ends, Adam and Rachael sit across the attic room speaking to but not
facing one another, surrounded by the bitter truth of moral dilemmas they cannot
change. Thus, they become powerless if well-
[One male role; one female role.]
The Tower
Act One, Scene One of The Tower opens in an army command post on the West Bank in
1983. Rella Shofar, an Israeli soldier, has been assigned to guard Fatima Aziz,
a young local Palestinian, who has been detained for allegedly throwing rocks at
Israeli occupying forces. The solitary nature of the situation and the fact the
young women are about the same age cause them to begin to talk to one another despite
the tensions of the circumstance. As might be expected, when they stake out their
political postures ands explain their individual religious alliances they find themselves
in bitter conflict. Ironically, it is also obvious that each hears the sentiment
of the other’s argument. However, despite that one small note of hope, the scene
ends with each of the young women expressing the kind of distain for the other that
is part of her cultural identity.
Act One, Scene Two takes place later when the women
meet again, this time by chance, at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Again, they are
in an anteroom, but this time there is a scholarly conference going on in an effort
to create a dialogue between Jews and Muslims.
Aziz has become a photographer for a news service that is covering the conference.
Shofar is a master’s degree candidate who advisor is participating in the meetings.
Once the young women recognize each other, they begin to argue much as they did
before, albeit less confrontationally. Rella admits she has read some of the Qu’ran
since they first met. Fatima has spent time reading parts of the Torah. In her
own way, each is trying to sort out the political and social constraints of Jewish
and Muslim Israel. Unfortunately, the scene ends on as bitter a note as did scene
one, for the two young women are still prisoners of long-
Act Two, Scene Three, brings the two young women together after a three-
Act Two, Scene Four take place in Dublin, Ireland, in 1994, more than ten years
after the first of Rella and Fatima’s conversations, this time atop the Martello
Tower made famous in Irish author James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. At this point, Rella
teaches Torah literature at Trinity University, in Dublin; Fatima is a photojournalist
for a small, independent Muslim peace-
As the two of them converse in what they both understand is the most unlikely of
settings—and they realize their religious differences still distance them in many
ways—the also share experiences that have, on one hand, freed them from many of their
cultural prejudices while, on the other hand, rendered each woman less secure in
the world. Thus, aware of her own religious ambivalence, Rella has invited Fatima
to visit her in Dublin after seeing Fatima momentarily on English television in the
midst of a press conference crowd. What Rella learns is that Fatima has abandoned
the Middle East, working in London because she was fired from her job in Syria when
she circulated a photograph she took at the Madrid Peace Conference of an Israeli
and a Palestinian diplomat in friendly conversation.
Standing on the tower overlooking Dublin Bay, far removed from the West Bank, the
two exiles discuss the past and their prospects for the future. The question the
audience must ask as the end of The Tower is: have the two young women abandoned
Israel/Palestine because they were finally weary after generations of rancor and
violence, or have they found answers that their families simply refuse to understand?
Like the issues raised in Common Ground, the issues raised in The Tower are not
answered in or by the play. Rather, it is the audience’s obligation to decide what
to decide.
[Two female roles.]
The Children of Moses Davar
Historically, there has only been one Shoah, but there have been other expulsions,
other genocides. Set in Spain in 1492 during the Inquisition, The Children of Moses
Davar personalizes the devastation visited on Sephardic Jews by introducing Esther
and David Davar, sister and brother, whose family is part of Madrid’s Jewish elite.
In Act One, Scene One David returns to Madrid after a six months’ journey to Alexandria,
Egypt, where he has been managing the family’s commercial interests for his sister
and himself since the death of their father. While his sister is thrilled at his
homecoming, Esther finally admits that very troubling things have been taking place;
old friends do not call; the young man who had been courting her no longer visits.
Furthermore, a family friend has died under “mysterious circumstances.” Most of
all, threats from Juan de Torquemada, the Royal Confessor, are being taken seriously
by Sephards of the Davars’ class, and many have converted to Christianity, however
insincerely.
Upset by the news, an angry David details the Jews’ cultural, political, and commercial
contributions to Spanish life. His sister, who surprises David with her newly cultivated
knowledge of Sephardic literature, decries the situation as well.
Then, in a letter Esther delivers from their grandfather, Moses Davar, David learns
he has been summoned to their grandfather’s house immediately, though the hour is
late. Equally concerned, Esther determines to wait up for David to return, for their
grandfather’s instructions that David should come through the family orchard and
then enter Moses’s home through a side door causes both of the young people great
anxiety.
Act One, Scene Two begins with David’s return to detail a complicated plan. In order
they escape the anticipated expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Moses Davar has arranged
the unthinkable: yes, the family is preparing to leave Spain. However, because the
arrangements will take time, both Esther and David are to convert to Christianity
and take Holy Orders. David is to become the Bishop of the Church at Valencia; Esther
is to enter a convent under David’s control; i.e., Davar gold has changed hands so
the conversions can protect the Davar family during the time the elder Davar needs
to arrange the transfer of family funds to Alexandria.
Horrified, Esther protests vehemently, for she had no desire to deny her Judaism.
Thus, the first act closes with David, miserable but resigned to the necessity of
the scheme, trying to reassure Esther that their grandfather’s plan is their only
hope.
Act Two, Scene Three opens with David—who was originally educated to be a Sephardic
scholar—now in his role as Catholic bishop, visiting Esther’s convent as part of
his official duties. Though they cannot acknowledge each other openly, the Mother
Superior has arranged for Esther to serve her brother his evening meal in a private
room. Cloaking their conversation in coded phrases, they exchange valuable political
and personal information. Esther learns that the situation for Jewish converses
has worsened. Prominent Sephards have been burned at the stake. At the same time,
Esther confesses she has found another young Jewish woman hiding in the convent with
who she shares confidences. Much to David’s consternation, Esther also admits she
has found a sense of tranquility in the Catholic meditative life. Thus, while David
is in conflict with the lie he is living, for he has been well received by the working
people of Valencia, who find his warmth and kindness reassuring, Esther has discovered
a refuge from the chaos that has enveloped Spain.
Act Two, Scene Four, the final scene, takes place three months later when David rushes
to the convent in the middle of the night to rescue his sister, for the expulsion
order has been issued. They must flee Spain; even their elaborate cover will not
keep them safe. Sadly, Moses Davar has died, but their grandmother is to meet them
at the ship they have hired to carry them to Egypt. Confused, Esther hesitates.
She had developed a loyalty to the Catholic sisters; she feels guilty at the idea
she must abandon her converso confidante.
In a bitter outburst at his sister’s apparent divided loyalty, David tells Esther
that Columbus, an Italian Jew, has that very day set sail to chart a new route to
India in the pay of the same Spanish government that is persecuting Sephards. Esther’s
protest that she has found peace in the convent angers David even more. Only when
he reminds Esther that their grandmother will fall victim to the Spanish if they
do not meet her in Valencia, Esther relents. Tragically, it is too late. An ominous
voice from offstage accuses the brother and sister of blasphemy against the Church
and that they are both under arrest. In their moment of doom, David and Esther turn
first to each other and then to the ancient, comforting words of their faith:
Bar-
Blessed art thou, O Eternal, Our God, King of the Universe.
Who hast made a distinction between the holy and not holy,
between light and darkness, between Israel and the other nations.
Baw-
With those last words, the stage fades to black, for all hope is lost.
(One male role; one female role. One offstage male voice role.]
Joyce Davidsen
B.A., University of California, Berkeley
Interested directors and/or producers may obtain manuscript copies of any of the six plays, all of
which have been successfully staged in Central and South Florida, by contacting Ronald Vierling at