An allegory of innocence triumphing over evil, Brundibar was composed in the ominous years leading up to World War II and performed by children imprisoned at Terezin, the Nazi’s notorious “model ghetto.” In it, a brother and sister struggle to save their mother against the ruthless oppression of the town’s tyrannical organ-grinder.
Devised by Tony Kushner and Maurice Sendak, Brundibar is presented alongside the pair’s adaptation of Comedy on the Bridge, an absurd commentary on war also written in Czechoslovakia in the thirties.