🎭 NEW! Pittsburgh Theatre Newsletter
Prime Stage Theatre’s Holocaust-themed play Perseverance is now available for streaming on WQED+ channel.
🎭 NEW! Pittsburgh Theatre Newsletter
Perseverance dramatizes the powerful 2019 memoir by author Lee Goldman Kikel chronicling her father Melvin Goldman’s postwar journey of healing and renewal in Pittsburgh during the 1950s and ’60s.
Adapted by playwright L.E. McCullough and directed by Art DeConciliis, Perseverance debuted at New Hazlett Theater in 2023.
The 70-minute video streaming on WQED+ captures the world premiere show and features standout performances by Amanda Anne Leight, Anne Rematt, Matthew J. Rush, Johnny Terreri and, in the role of Melvin Goldman, David Nackman.
Perseverance is accessible on WQED+ here: https://www.pbs.org/video/perseverance-gxqi9w/
Back in the day, says McCullough, you might have casually passed Melvin Goldman on the street in Squirrel Hill or visited his jewelry shop above National Record Mart at Darlington & Murray.
“Chatting with him, you wouldn’t have guessed he’d spent his teens enduring the horrors of Auschwitz before arriving in Pittsburgh as a refugee determined to reclaim his stolen life.”
As part of its annual anti-genocide programming partnership with Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, Prime Stage Theatre received a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts grant to produce this uniquely Pittsburgh story.
“Perseverance depicts Melvin Goldman’s irrepressible spirituality and unflagging love for humanity as he worked to replace darkness with light, one piece of handcrafted jewelry at a time,” said Prime Stage Theatre artistic director Wayne Brinda. “It’s a Holocaust story that holds out hope with the history.”