HERE THERE ARE BLUEBERRIES to Launch Conversation Series With Anderson Cooper & More

Tectonic Theater Project will launch “Widening The Lens: A Conversation Series” a landmark post-show forum that will bring a group of leading voices in journalism, history, human rights, and faith to the Broadway stage following select performances of the Pulitzer Prize finalist play Here There Are Blueberries, written by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, and directed by Kaufman.

“Widening The Lens: A Conversation Series” will offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for audiences to engage more deeply with the urgent questions at the heart of Here There Are Blueberries. Through thought-provoking discussions exploring themes such as memory, complicity, and responsibility, the series carries the play’s own act of investigation beyond the final curtain, fostering a meaningful dialogue about the past, its enduring relevance in today’s world, and the choices we make that shape the future.

Here There Are Blueberries will play a strictly limited 10-week engagement with previews beginning Monday, November 2, at the Barrymore Theatre. Opening night is set for Monday, November 9. The run will end on Sunday, January 10, 2027.

THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL

Anderson Cooper with Irene Weiss

Thursday, November 12 – Following the 1PM matinee

Anderson Cooper, the acclaimed CNN anchor and award-winning journalist, reunites with Irene Weiss, the Auschwitz survivor he first interviewed for his 2024 “60 Minutes” story on Here There Are Blueberries. Weiss and her family arrived at Auschwitz on the very day many of the photographs in the Lili Jacob Album were taken – and she can be identified among the people pictured in them. Together, Cooper and Weiss confront what it means to look at photographic evidence of humanity at its most extreme: the persistence of memory, the inheritance of trauma, and what these haunting images reveal about our capacity for cruelty and survival.

THE DETECTIVES OF HISTORY

Faith Salie with Rebecca Erbelding, Moisés Kaufman, & Amanda Gronich

Sunday, November 15 – Following the 3PM matinee

Emmy Award-winning “CBS Sunday Morning” contributor Faith Salie brings together the historian at the center of Here There Are Blueberries with the artists who transformed her extraordinary investigation into theater. Dr. Rebecca Erbelding’s painstaking work at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to identify the people pictured in the Höcker album became the foundation of the play. Joined by playwrights Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich, Erbelding takes us inside the discoveries, dead ends, interviews, and unanswered questions that shaped their years-long investigation – and the moment historical evidence became a human story onstage.

POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY

Ambassador Samantha Power with David Goldman

Presented by FASPE

Thursday, November 19 – Following the 7PM evening performance

What happens to individual conscience inside institutions of enormous power? David Goldman, founder and chair of FASPE (Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics), sits down with Samantha Power–former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Administrator of USAID, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, current Harvard University professor, and one of the world’s leading voices on human rights and genocide. Drawing on decades spent confronting moral crises from inside government, Power examines one of the most urgent questions raised by Here There Are Blueberries: How do ordinary people navigate the distance between compromise and complicity–and what responsibility do we bear when the institutions we serve ask us to look away?

FAITH, CONSCIENCE, & COMPLICITY

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove with David Goldman

Presented by FASPE

Wednesday, December 2 – Following the 7PM evening performance

When injustice is in plain sight, is standing by a moral choice? FASPE (Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics) founder David Goldman brings together Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II–pastor, civil rights leader, and architect of the contemporary Poor People’s Campaign–and author, pastor, and activist Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. Together, they confront the moral questions that reverberate through Here There Are Blueberries: What does conscience demand of us when we witness injustice? When does silence become complicity? And in moments that test our humanity, is there really such a thing as a bystander?

VICTIMS & PERPETRATORS: THE LEGACY OF TRAUMA

Descendants Gary Kramer & Tilman Taube with Thorsten Wagner

Presented by FASPE

Sunday, December 13 – Following the 3PM matinee

What happens when history lives inside your own family? Thorsten Wagner, the Principal Scholar of FASPE, leads an extraordinary encounter between two descendants connected to the photographs at the heart of Here There Are Blueberries. Gary Kramer is the grandson of Auschwitz survivor Lili Jacob, whose discovery of an album documenting the arrival of Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz became one of the Holocaust’s most important visual records. Tilman Taube’s grandfather, an SS doctor, appears in the Höcker album, which documents the private lives of the SS officers who ran Auschwitz. Together, they explore the radically different inheritances carried by the descendants of victims and perpetrators, and what happens when it becomes impossible to look away from the past you inherit.

THE RESPONSIBILITY TO REMEMBER

Jonah Platt with USHMM Director Sara Bloomfield

Sunday, December 20 – Following the 3PM matinee

How do we make history matter to people who did not live it? Jonah Platt, actor and host of “Being Jewish with Jonah Platt,” joins Sara Bloomfield, longtime director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for a vital conversation about the future of Holocaust memory. As the generation of survivors passes away and firsthand testimony becomes history, the responsibility of remembrance shifts to those who come after. Together, Platt and Bloomfield explore how we carry these stories forward, how we reach generations increasingly distant from the Holocaust, and why the act of remembering is not only about preserving the past– it is about shaping the choices we make in the present.

HISTORY AS TEACHER

Ken Burns and Daniel Mendelsohn with historian Dr. Rebecca Erbelding

Thursday, January 7 – Following the 7PM evening performance

How do we tell the truth about the past without allowing it to become merely the past? Daniel Mendelsohn, acclaimed author of The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million, joins legendary filmmaker Ken Burns and USHMM historian Dr. Rebecca Erbelding for a conversation about history, memory, and the power of storytelling. Moving from archival evidence and family testimony to documentary film and the Broadway stage, they examine how the Holocaust is retold for each new generation– and the profound responsibility storytellers assume when they turn history into narrative. At its heart is the question that gives history its urgency: What can the past teach us about how we choose to live now?

Here There Are Blueberries begins with an extraordinary real-life mystery. In 2007, an album of Nazi-era photographs arrived at the desk of a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum archivist. The photographs weren’t like any that had been seen before. As curators unraveled the truth behind the images, the album soon made headlines and ignited a debate that reverberated far beyond the museum walls.