An Evening with Madame F

An Evening with Madame F will explore the life and death experience of music performance in concentration camps, drawing on survivor accounts including that of Fania Fenelon, who performed in the woman's orchestra at Auschwitz. As a pianist-singer-actress, Stevens will take on the persona of an elderly concentration camp survivor evoking the psychological and emotional challenges confronting Madame F when, as a young musician, she and others created music while their fellow concentration camp prisoners were murdered.

Claudia Stevens amazed audiences when she crossed over from an established career as concert pianist, scholar and recording artist to become a nationally recognized multidisciplinary performer and playwright. In recent years she has created a unique, rich and varied body of one-person music-theater works - several produced by Public Television and National Public Radio (NPR Playhouse), which she performs at major venues, utilizing vocal and dramatic skills to complement her keyboard mastery.

Stevens' acclaimed one-woman performance depicts the wrenching survival story of women musicians in concentration campus through music, song and drama. "An Evening with Madame F" is based on the experiences of performers in concentration camps, including Fania Fenelon, who is a musician and cabaret singer and performed in the Women's Orchestra at the Birkenau death camp. Originally commissioned by the Jewish Community Federation of Richmond, Stevens conceived the work, wrote the text and collaborated with Fred Cohen in development of the musical materials. Cohen also created the electronic sound used in the piece. By blending historical inmate songs and first-hand accounts, Stevens showcases her giftedness in singing, piano playing and acting to portray the struggle of inmates who survived the concentration camp by way of their artistic expressions.

Stevens is a California native and daughter of Holocaust survivors. "An Evening with Madame F" was produced for television by the PBS affiliate WCVE and was also broadcast over Voice of America. Stevens constantly seeks to enlarge the scope and range of her creative output. Her performance has been called "one of the most profound theater moments of recent times" (WHRO, National Public Radio, PBS Television affiliates). Poet Andrei Codrescu praised a recent monologue play, calling it "powerful stuff . . one of the best works we ever published . ." Ellis Cose, contributing editor, Newsweek, calls hers "a body of works that is, in large measure, about memory, and that derives its power . . from the connection of her journey of self discovery to an infinitely larger quest . ." And Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Roald Hoffman has called her work "wonderful, both as art and in its pathos."