The Story of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg by Nina Serrano

Author:Nina Serrano [Serrano, Nina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: A Court Room and Prison Drama
Publisher: Estuary Press
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Nina Serrano on the set of Bryan High School Preoduction of the Story of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Bryan, Texas, 2016

The Rosenberg's letters written from the death house in the anguish of separation from each other and their young children were palpable, especially with the three sided seating bringing the actors and audience into close proximity. So when the actors dropped their roles to speak directly to the audience, it required a shift in the viewer to suspend the vicarious emotional suffering and to engage intellectually with facts.

In our original script, we only used Ethel and Julius's actual letters and words selected from the one thousand page trial transcript and other primary sources. But in Jacob Justice's version, he not only added some new lines of his own, but he also incorporated the new information about the deal David Greenglass had made with FBI to lie about his sister, so they could get their conviction. His treachery was publicly revealed years after he got out of prison in 1960, after serving nine and a half years from his original eighteen year sentence. In a 2008 book and interview by NY Times reporter Sam Roberts, Greenglass admitted he had lied about Ethel. The actor portraying him dealt with the man's complexity and had studied him well.

Only a week or two before the 2016 performance of the play, 60 Minutes had aired a CBS TV program on the Rosenberg case featuring their now grown sons, Robert and Michael Meeropol. The program included footage of the real David Greenglass explaining to the 60 Minutes reporter how he had no regrets in lying about Ethel because he saved his wife, the mother of his children.

After we left the theatre, our excitement about the play quickly turned into shock as we learned of Trump's election victory. We had been smothered in kindness and appreciation by the cast, crew and their families, and impressed with their deeply felt portrayal of the trial and execution of the Rosenbergs. Now, the election results stood in stark contrast. How could we understand the two events on the same night? We are still pondering that question in 2018.

The new information presented in the play from Sam Roberts book and the CBS interviews with the sons and with FBI informant David Greenglass included allegations linking Julius Rosenberg with Russian spying. But these allegations, made 55 years after the trial, do not change the fact that no evidence was submitted to the court to prove their crime. And nothing changed the fact that there were no atomic bomb secrets in the first place because the science of atom bombs was well known internationally. And certainly the new information that David Greenglass had lied strengthened the case that Ethel was railroaded. We stand behind the play's reliance upon the actual words of the Rosenbergs during that terrible ordeal in which they refused to give false testimony demanded by their inquisitors and went to their deaths proclaiming their innocence.

Why offer The Story of Ethel

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