Born in a province of Czarist Russia, Kadya Molodowsky tutored children in Kiev in the early days after the Bolshevik Revolution. She went on to become a schoolteacher in Warsaw for children who lived in utter poverty. Chance, circumstance and an enviable relationship with the language got her noticed as a poet. By the time she had emigrated to the US in 1935, she had already published a few books of poetry.
Somewhere in the aftermath of the Holocaust, she wrote a stage drama called After the Desert God--a drama inspired by true events in the life of Doña Gracia Mendes--a very wealthy 16th century European woman who developed a network that saved quite a few forcibly converted Jews from the horrors of the Inquisition. A woman who refused to take her husband's name in 16th century Europe, Doña Gracia Mendes is a fascinating figure in history even without the heroic end of her personality. Vanity Theatre Company presents a staged reading of a brand new translation of After the Desert in a couple of different performances next week:
May 6th at 3pm at UWM's Music BUilding Lecture Hall on 2400 East Kenwood Boulevard.
There is also an evening reading of the new translation on May 8th at 7pm at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center on 6255 North Santa Monica Boulevard.
