Welcome to our page for Harford Christian's 2016 production of Craig Sodaro's Edelweiss! Follow us all the way from rehearsals to closing night!
The following synopsis comes from playwright, Craig Sodaro:
It is 1941. Anticipation runs high in one classroom at the Schloss Strasse School for Girls in Munich. What will the new teacher be like? Each of the girls in the classroom hopes she's not like the horrid former teacher who, rumor has it, joined the Gestapo. The students are pleasantly surprised when Frau Decker, the militant headmistres
s, introduces them to Dorchen Werth, a young teacher just beginning her career. Dorchen quickly sees her class as a microcosm of society. There's Eleanor, who is in love with the local N**i Youth leader; Hilde, a hard worker who protects her younger sister, Gertrude; Lilli, the girl who's trying to get all the boys; Paula, the student who has her eye on attending the university; Renita, who knows enough to be frightened because of her mixed heritage; Annabelle, a girl with divided loyalties; Edith, frightened of everything and everyone; and Marte, who is frightened by nothing. As the N**i noose tightens around the neck of the common German, the effects are felt in the classroom. One student doesn't show up for school one morning, and it becomes clear she and her family have been taken to a camp. Angered, another girl confronts Kurt, the local N**i Youth leader, and forces him to dance to forbidden "big band" music she has brought to school. Horrified that such music is heard through her school, Decker begins watching Dorchen more closely. Fearing for both the safety of her students and their intellectual freedom, Dorchen asks the girls if they will agree to allow complete freedom of thought and speech within the classroom walls. The girls agree, and, for a time, experience the luxury of security. But when two classmates are arrested with their family for hiding Jews, another retaliates by attacking Kurt and his friends. This action horrifies the rest of the girls who know the incident will be traced the classroom. Their security begins to evaporate as they doubt one another; and their own fears begin to eclipse reason and common sense.
