Synopsis

 

The stage version of “Hiding in the Spotlight” was written by Candy Dawson and directed by Darrell Ann Stone. The play revealed the terror and resourcefulness of two youngsters, a 14-year-old piano prodigy who had been performing on Soviet radio since early childhood and her musical 12-year-old sister, who escaped from the death march that killed all the other Jews in their city.  Eventually they survived by playing for Nazi soldiers, often at slave labor camps.  After the war the sisters immigrated to the United States, where they were among the first refugees to study at Juilliard, and where Zhanna Arshanskaya Dawson later joined the piano faculty at Indiana University.