Extract from the 2008 stage production of "The First To Go"

Extract from the 2008 stage production of "The First To Go"

Nazi Germany. 1944
A Sanatorium for the Disabled in Limburg.
Siegfried is an inmate with brittle bones, a congenital disability.

Brunhilde, an auxiliary nurse volunteer. She lost her hand in a fire when
as an army nurse, the military hospital where she worked was bombed by British warplanes.

They have just learned that he, his two friends, Heide and Helmut, and other fellow patients are to be taken to the Hadamar Killing Centre nearby.

Cast

Cerrie Burnell - BRUNHILDE
Alan Clay - Helmut
Nick Field - Goebbels / Stauffenberg / Dr. Gottfried Gegner
Catherine Gillard - Dr. Eva Dreck / Else / Nina von Stauffenberg
Kenny Harvey - Dr. Karl Spottgeburt / Dr. Brandt / Treskow
Robyn Hunt - Heide
Rod Matthew - Dr. Todt / Fritz / Hitler / Sauerbruch
Nabil Shaban - Siegfried

Production team

Peter Clerke - Director
Designer - Gordon Davidson
Tim Brinkhurst - Musical Director
Christine Ross - Costume Designer
Paul Sorley - LX Designer
Davy O'Neil - Production Manager
Jo Kennedy - Stage Manager

Susannah Jeffries - General Manager
Fiona McCurdy - Marketing and Press
Marc Marnie - Production photographer

Thanks to Mark Thompson, Artistic Director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh for believing and supporting the theatre project.

Also thanks to Angela Hogg and Maggie Maxwell of the Scottish Arts Council for offer of financial support.

And NO THANKS to the Richard Attenborough Centre, Leicester University, for pulling their venue from the tour, for being stupidly commercial, by worrying that "The First To Go" won't attract an audience", because of it's so-called "depressing subject matter". Strange how no one says that about plays and films dealing with the Jewish Holocaust...but when it comes to the Disabled Holocaust, "box office concerns" or "lack of relevance for today audiences" is used as an excuse for saying NO.

THE BOOK of the PLAY can be ordered from any bookstore....

The First To Go by Nabil Shaban

an original theatre play about disabled people in Nazi Germany

Everyone knows about the millions of Jews who died in the Nazi extermination camps. Countless books, plays and films have been produced to ensure that we never forget and so remain vigilant against any likely recurrence. Yet until Nabil Shaban decided to do something about it, there has never been a play or film which seeks to tell the story of Hitler's Euthanasia program for disabled people.

In fact, THE FIRST TO GO, the First Victims, in Hitler's systematic drive to purify the Aryan race were people with physical, sensory, mental and psychiatric disabilities. Gas chambers were originally created to speed up the culling of such unwanted “Useless Eaters”, the term used by Hitler to describe disabled people.

Nabil Shaban's play, THE FIRST TO GO, doesn't just tell the story of Disabled Victims, it also tells of Disabled Heroes and Disabled Villains.

The Disabled Victims, Siegfried, Heide and Helmut....it is their destiny to be given lethal injections.

The Disabled Villain, Dr. Josef Goebbels, a man who so hated being crippled with a clubbed foot, he chose to hate all disabled people, he masterminded the propaganda campaign advocating Euthanasia.

The Disabled Heroes, Claus von Stauffenberg, the one armed, one eyed "terrorist" who attempted to blow up Hitler

And Brunhilde, the German Army nurse who becomes disabled and consequently joins the ranks of the persecuted but in doing so, helps thwart Hitler's plan to rid the world of so-called "imperfect" people.

BUY DIRECT from Sirius Book Works

Price: £7.99 ISBN 978-0-9548294-1-4

email: sirius_book_works@yahoo.co.uk
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