School Matinee: My Brother's Gift

Runs Oct 1 – Oct 24, 2024

Adapted by Claudia Inglis Haas

From the writings and memories of Eva Geiringer Schloss and the poetry and paintings of Heinz Geiringer

Directed by Andrew Jordan Nance

Booking school matinees October 1-24, Tuesdays-Thursdays at 10am and 11:30am.

Public performances can be booked on Sundays, October 20 or 27 at 1 pm. Click HERE to book a public performance

Anne Frank’s family and Heinz Geiringer’s family were neighbors in Amsterdam and went into hiding at roughly the same time. Anne Frank left a diary showing the difficulties of growing up in hiding. Heinz Geiringer left over twenty paintings and a book of poetry which show us both his hope for the future and the terror of the time. Heinz loved the arts. A trained musician, Heinz turned to painting and poetry to utilize his time. He painted on tea towels, pillowcases and any surface that he could find. During the play, we witness his artistic growth through his paintings, poetry and his sister’s remembrances. The paintings vary from a nostalgic love of the life he once led to the fears that were now part of his everyday existence. From the tender age of fifteen to seventeen, Heinz created a body of work that exists to this day. The play covers the power of art under unconscionable circumstances and how art is part of our collective humanity to cope, to heal and to hope.

Performances are recommended for ages 10 and up.

Click here for the SFUSF Flyer

Click here for the Private School Flyer

Supported in part by Lesbians for Good of Horizons Foundation, The Libitzky Family Foundation Fund, LSP Family Foundation, and the generosity of NCTC’s individual donors.

Video Interviews

Creative Team & Headshots

Playwright Claudia Inglis Haas (pronouns: she/her) has worked as a playwright, director, actor and teacher of theatre. She has created theatre in schools (including their gymnasiums and cafeterias), caves, nature centers and libraries. Theatre is everywhere. Claudia has fifty published plays which have seen over 1500 productions in every state in the U.S.A. as well as on five continents (Still looking for South American and Antarctica.) Her plays have been popular in the high school one-act play festival competitions and the ten-minute plays are used regularly for forensics.

Andrew Jordan Nance (pronouns: he/him) most recently wrote and directed Puppy Mind, which has been touring in San Francisco Public School for the past two years with NCTC’s Youth Aware program. Additional directing highlights include As Bees in Honey Drown, My Beautiful Launderette (NCTC) , Wunderworld, ( Lesher Center for The Arts), It’s Christmas Carole (Children’s Creativity Theater). Additionally, he is the author of five published books; The Barefoot King, Dolly Dives Deep, The Lion in Me, Mindful Arts in the Classroom, and Puppy Mind. In 2013 he founded Mindful Arts San Francisco; a program of the San Francisco Education Fund that provides volunteer mindfulness educators to teach in SF public schools. www.mindfulartssf.org. We hope this love letter to the Geiringer family makes them proud and brings us that peace is possible.

Eva Schloss (pronouns: she/her) is an Austrian-English Holocaust survivor, memoirist and stepdaughter of Otto Frank, the father of Margot and diarist Anne Frank. Schloss speaks widely of her family’s experiences during the Holocaust and is a participant in the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive project to record video answers to be used in educational tools. She has authored three books (The Promise, Eva’s Story, and After Auschwitz) and is a co-founder of the Anne Frank Trust in the UK. Learn more about the book that inspired this play here.

Creative Team

Stage Manager: Liam Kirk (pronouns: he/him)
Lighting Designer: Nic Candito (pronouns: he/him)
Sound Designer: Kaitlin Rosen (pronouns: she/her)
Costume Designer: Anthony Lopez (pronouns: he/him)