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L.A. Theatre Works docudrama ‘Exodus: The Shanghai Jews’
named a ‘Best Audiobook 2023’ by AudioFile magazine
LOS ANGELES (November 30, 2023) — AudioFile magazine has named the L.A. Theatre Works recording of Exodus: The Shanghai Jews a “Best Audiobook 2023” in the Audio Originals category.
After the Anschluss of 1938, Dr. Feng Shan Ho, the Chinese Consul-General in Vienna, offered unlimited visas to Jews seeking to escape Europe. As a result, about 20,000 Jews settled in Shanghai between 1938 and 1941. There, they established synagogues and businesses, living side-by-side with their new Chinese neighbors under harsh conditions during the Japanese occupation.
An original, L.A. Theatre Works-commissioned audio docudrama by Kate McAll, Exodus recounts the true stories of eight refugees who escaped Nazi persecution to settle in Shanghai — the last place they could ever have imagined living.
Recorded before a live audience over the course of four performances at UCLA’s James Bridges Theater, Exodus features veteran actors Edita Brychta (Daniel Deronda, Oslo, The Murder on the Links and The Confession of Henry Jekyll, MD); Shannon Cochran (August: Osage County, End Days, The Rivalry, Dr. Strangelove, Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers); Arye Gross (M. Butterfly, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov, Julius Caesar, Crimes of the Heart); Anna Mathias (Bump, The Goodbye Girl, Act One, Cyrano de Bergerac); Alan Shearman (Racing Demon, An Enemy of the People, The Life of Galileo); André Sogliuzzo (For Us All, The Sun Also Rises, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Twelfth Night, Pressure); and Joanne Whalley (Extinction, The Little Foxes, Macbeth, Look Back in Anger, The Real Thing).
“These eight personal narratives give us a glimpse into a fascinating, little-known piece of history,” says director Anna Lyse Erikson. “Each story is a tale of tragedy and triumph.”
L.A. Theatre Works stands apart in its approach to making great theater widely accessible and affordable, bringing plays into homes and classrooms of millions of theater lovers, teachers and students each year. The company’s syndicated audio theater series broadcasts weekly on public radio stations across the U.S. (locally, in Southern California, on KPFK 90.7 FM); can be downloaded as a podcast via iTunes, NPR One, or wherever you get your podcasts; and can be streamed on demand at latw.org. The L.A. Theatre Works catalog of over 600 recorded plays is the largest archive of its kind in the world, featuring classics by William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen and Lillian Hellman, as well as new works by Lynn Nottage, Charlayne Woodard and Jeanne Sakata, to name a few. Audiofile magazine calls L.A. Theatre Works productions “the gold standard for fine audio theater recordings.”
The audio theater recording of Exodus: The Shanghai Jews is available for digital download for $4.99 at latw.org.
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