Critics Call 'History Remembers' a Play with Important Messages for the Future

A new play by noted writer and human rights activist, Rachel Smith-Bard, has received strongly positive reviews and is now being offered to community workshops and theater groups throughout the United States. The play, History Remembers, tells the three-generational history of a French family that forgets the lessons of bigotry and racism.

Philadelphia, PA (PRWEB) March 14, 2008 -- Critics have given strongly positive reviews to History Remembers, a new play written by writer and human rights activist, Rachel Smith-Bard.

History Remembers had its debut at a community theater workshop in suburban Philadelphia in February and is currently being offered to community workshops and theater groups throughout the country.

The drama drives home the theme that the lessons of history do repeat themselves and will haunt governments and individuals who fail to learn from their past.

Smith-Bard's play tells the three-generational history of a French family that lives in pre-war Europe, migrates to the United States following World War II and continues today to pay the price of forgetting the past.

Although the family personally experienced the German occupation of France, its modern-day sons and daughters are largely oblivious to bigotry and racism.

Indeed, one son - an undergraduate at an Ivy League university on the Upper West Side of New York -- is an outspoken critic of Israel, using the same kind of rhetoric and spreading the same kinds of disinformation that the Nazi's used in the 1930s to win support for their efforts to defame - and ultimately destroy -- European Jews.

In Smith-Bard's drama, the Ivy League student is pro-Hamas, pro-Ahmadinejad-Bollinger and anti-Zionist. Nonetheless, he is kidnapped and tortured by anti-Western radicals when he visits the Gaza Strip on a Hamas solidarity mission.

"It always starts with unwarranted attacks against the Jews," says Smith-Bard. "But it never, ever stops with the Jews. The same hate that fuels anti-Semitism goes on to fuel gay-bashing, hatred of non-whites, and even hatred of Christians and Catholics," she says.

Several local Pennsylvania papers gave History Remembers five stars out of a possible five stars and one local radio reviewer said it was "the most riveting, original theatre I've seen this decade."

Community groups interested in staging this 90-minute drama should contact Smith-Bard directly.

Smith-Bard is a full-time writer, publishing short stories, plays and other creative works.