Michael McKeever on writing The Garden of Hannah List During the reign of the Third Reich, six million Jews were put to death. Six million. That's a lot. In fact, it's almost inconceivable what a huge number of people that is. That being said, I find it difficult to believe that that many people ceased to exist and an entire country failed to notice. So what happened? What did the people of Germany do as their neighbors were dragged out of their homes? As they saw Jewish shops and businesses shut down ... or burned down? Did they do anything? Did they object? Did they simply watch? These questions became the basis for what would eventually become The Garden of Hannah List. Inspired by a dear friend of mine (who, as a little girl, actually sat on Hermann Goering's lap), the play takes a fictional family and places them in the center of historic fact. The six members of the List family become individually representative of what I imagined would be the different "takes" on the Nazis and what was happening to Germany at the time. Each member reacts in a different way. From apathy to actually taking a stand. Using this as a foundation, I tried to make the play unique as I possibly could. For one thing, it is a play about the Holocaust that has no Jews or Nazis in any of the lead roles. It all takes place in the relative peace of a retired school teacher's garden. Yet this unassuming setting becomes a microcosm of Nazi Germany. And as far as the Lists are concerned, I made an effort to create ordinary people. Ordinary people faced with true evil. Ordinary people confronted with a choice between right and wrong. While writing Hannah List, something very odd happened. I found myself faced with questions that, for the life of me, I couldn't answer. In order to fight evil effectively, do you need to become as evil as the evil you fight? And if you do, then what makes you any better than the evil you're fighting? If that's the case, then is it better to rise above it all and ignore the evil altogether? And while we're at it, who decides how evil evil has to get before it's truly evil? Each question led to another ... to another ... to another. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't come up with any answers that satisfied me as the playwright. Go figure. It drove me crazy, and in many ways influenced the way the play was written. Then, just before the it was finished, I finally got it. I understood. It was right there on the page in front of me. I realized, lo and behold, that the point of this play wasn't to come up with answers but to present the questions. Simple as that. The answers, good, bad or otherwise, should be decided by each audience member. Individually. In their own hearts. Of the plays I've written, The Garden of Hannah List remains my favorite. Not because I'm so fond of the List family, although I am. And not because of any message it may convey. Rather, I think it's because the play asks questions that, at least in my eyes, can only be answered in our hearts...*END

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