Panndora Productions

A play by Stephen Massicotte
directed by Sonja Berggren
Art Theater, 2025 E. 4th Street, Long Beach

A short play about the creation of Ullman's opera in the Theresienstadt camp and a film portrait of Kurt Gerron, a jewish director who was ordered to direct a Nazi propaganda film about the Theresienstadt camp.

A fictional account of the circumstances surrounding the creation of the opera The Emperor of Atlantis by Viktor Ullmann in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during the Second World War.

The story behind the creation of the opera is fascinating and heartbreaking. It was composed and written by Victor Ullman and Petr Kien while imprisoned inside the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The Nazis presented Theresienstadt (despite its brutal living conditions- over 33,000 died while housed there) as a "model" camp in order to deceive the International Red Cross regarding the horrendous occurrences and living conditions inside camps across Europe. In order to use the camp for propaganda purposes, they encouraged a cultural life inside Theresienstadt of theatre, chamber music, opera in concert format, painting and drawing, which led to the creation of the opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis (The Emperor of Atlantis).

Alberta playwright Steven Massicotte, a professed history junkie, decided to write a play about Viktor Ullmann, Petr Kien and the story of the creation of the Opera. While being a fictional account of the creation of the opera, the play very much has basis in fact. Ullmann, as portrayed in the play, really was a decorated WWI hero who fought on the Italian front, alongside soldiers who would go on to join the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) during Word War II. Like the violin player in the play, there really was a 15-year-old violinist in Der Kaiser Von Atlantis in Theresienstadt named Paul Kling. Mr. Kling now lives in La Jolla, California. Petr Kien really was a poet, painter and sketch artist, and the character of Helen closely resembles a friend of Kien's who was imprisoned with him inside the camp.