The Soap Myth

The Soap Myth is a play by American playwright Jeff Cohen. The play had a workshop run in July 2009 at the Dog Run Repertory Company, and had an Off-Broadway run in the Spring of 2012 Off Broadway at The Roundabout Theater's Harold and Mimi Steinberg Theatre Center. That production was filmed and the film was broadcast nationally on PBS and can be viewed at digitaltheatre.com. The cast was Greg Mullavey, Andi Potemkin, Dee Pelletier and Donald Corren under the direction of Arnold Mittlelman.

On May 2nd, 2016, The Soap Myth was presented as a reading at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts. The reading, directed by Pam Berlin, starred legendary 7-time Emmy Award winning actor Ed Asner and 2-time Tony Award nominee Jayne Atkinson. The cast also included Blair Baker and Donald Corren. The reading, produced by Burke-Cohen Entertainment, was the flagship event of Remembrance Readings, a national program in honor of Holocaust Memorial Day presented by the National Jewish Theater Foundation.

During the week of February 21, 2017, "The Soap Myth" had 5 West Coast readings: @ Marin Academy and Marin Theater Company (San Francisco), @ Shomrei Torah Synagogue in West Hills (LA), University Synagogue in Irvine and at Center Theatre Group's Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City (LA). The cast was Ed Asner, 4-time Tony Award nominee, 2-time Drama Desk Award winner and 2-time Emmy Award nominee Tovah Feldshuh, Blair Baker and Donald Corren under the direction of Pam Berlin.

The Soap Myth dramatizes the powerful confrontation between survivor memory and historical memory and depicts the insidiousness of Holocaust denial. More than a half century after World War II, at the desperate urging of a passionate survivor, a young investigative reporter finds herself caught between numerous versions of the same story and trying to separate fact from fiction. Did the Nazis make soap from the corpses of their murdered Jewish victims? Played out against the backdrop of deadline reporting and journalistic integrity, Jeff Cohen's critically acclaimed play The Soap Myth uses this horrific possibility as its catalyst. It questions who deserves the right to write history — those who have lived it and remember, those studying and protecting it, or those seeking to distort its very existence? And finally, what responsibility should others take once they know the truth?

Although The Soap Myth is a work of fiction, it is, in the words of the program, "inspired by real people and real events as well as an article written by Josh Rolnick in Moment magazine profiling Holocaust survivor Morris Spitzer."

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