Writing Samples > Scriptwriting
Warsaw | by Warren Goldie
Finalist, Baltimore Playwrights Festival, 2003 • Produced, Fells Point Corner Theater, Baltimore, 2003 • Finalist, Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region Denver, 2008
Cast of Characters:
MYER
The patriarch of the family. A master tailor.
ESTHER
Myer’s loyal wife.
SAMMY
Myer and Esther’s elder son. A resistance fighter.
FELIX
The younger son.
SASHA
Felix’s wife.
JOSEPH
A neighborhood boy.
THE GHOST
A young woman.
Setting:
Warsaw, Poland, late December 1940. The scene is the living room of a basement apartment, furnished with a couch, a table and chairs, and a kitchen to one side. One doorway leads into a bedroom. The other leads outside.
Just over a year ago, World War II started when the German army invaded Poland. The Polish forces, no match for the German war machine, were defeated in about a month. The occupying Nazi forces now control all Polish cities, including the capital, Warsaw.
A year has passed since then. It’s now fall of 1940. Warsaw’s 400,000 Jews have been forced from their homes to crowd together in the Warsaw Ghetto, a 1.3 square-mile section of the city enclosed by a 10-foot wall topped with barbed wire.
The Ghetto’s residents are regularly terrorized by German soldiers. Mass deportations to the death camps are still two years away. Though rumors are beginning to circulate…