LORE SEGAL’S NOVEL “OTHER PEOPLE’S HOUSES” TO BE ADAPTED FOR THE STAGE

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Michael Jorgensen
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, PLEASE

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST
LORE SEGAL’S
INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED NOVEL

“OTHER PEOPLE’S HOUSES”

TO BE ADAPTED FOR THE STAGE
BY EMILY FELDMAN & DANIEL AUKIN

HEADSHOTS AVAILABLE HERE


New York, NY (September 30, 2021) – Pulitzer Prize finalist Lore Segal’s internationally acclaimed semi-autobiographical novel Other People’s Houses will be adapted for the stage by Emily Feldman and three-time Obie Award winner Daniel Aukin.

Nine months after Hitler takes Austria, a ten-year-old girl leaves Vienna aboard a train that transports several hundred children to safety in England. For the next seven years she finds herself living in “other people’s houses”: the homes of the wealthy Orthodox Jewish Levines, the working-class Hoopers, and two elderly sisters who inhabit a formal Victorian household. Told from the perspective of a child, Other People’s Houses offers an insightful and witty depiction of the habits and customs of those who gave her refuge, and a memorable portrait of the postwar immigrant experience.

“In 1938, when I was ten years old, I wrote down my story for my first foster family because it seemed to me that they did not understand what it was like to have lived in Hitler’s Vienna, or to escape to England on the Children’s Transport. The story grew into a series published in The New Yorker between 1962 and ’64, and became the novel Other People’s Houses. For a lifelong lover of the theater it will be wonderful if, in my nineties, I can see these events adapted for the stage to allow new generations to witness to the terrors human beings can inflict on each other,” said Lore Segal.

“Shortly after I read Other People’s Houses, I discovered that Lore Segal lived just two floors below me. I treasured her book and knew that it was kismet. Lore and I became friends and I started to imagine a way to bring Other People’s Houses to life onstage. I am excited to pair two theater artists I admire to adapt this moving and relevant story and I’m grateful for our ongoing collaboration with Lore,” said producer Jacob Stuckelman.

Lore Segal’s Other People’s Houses was originally published in 1964 by The New Press and hailed by critics including Cynthia Ozick and Elie Wiesel. The stage adaptation of the novel will be produced by Jacob Stuckelman and Joseph Hayes. Additional information will be announced shortly.

B I O G R A P H I E S

LORE SEGAL (Author) was born in Vienna and educated at the University of London. The author of Other People’s Houses, Her First American, and Shakespeare’s Kitchen (all published by The New Press) and other works, she is a regular contributor to the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, the New Republic, and other publications. Between 1968 and 1996 she taught writing at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, Princeton University, Bennington College, Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Ohio State University, from which she retired in 1996.

EMILY FELDMAN (Adaptor). Emily Feldman’s work has been developed by Magic Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Roundabout Theatre Company, The Playwrights Realm, Portland Center Stage, New York Stage and Film, The New Harmony Project, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, American Conservatory Theatre, and Second Stage, among others. Feldman is an alumna of The Working Farm at SPACE on Ryder Farm, The Jerome Fellowship/Core Apprenticeship at the Playwrights’ Center, and emerging writers groups at Page 73, The Orchard Project, and Two River Theater. She’s served as the Shank Playwright-in-Residence at Playwrights Horizons and Tow Playwright-in-Residence at Manhattan Theatre Club. Her work has received an Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, The Kennedy Center’s Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, a MacDowell Fellowship, and was included on the 2019 and 2020 Kilroys Lists. In 2020, The Broadway Women’s League named her one of 50 Women to Watch on Broadway. She is currently working on commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, and Arena Stage. She received her B.A. from Middlebury College, M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego, and is a recent Lila Acheson Wallace American playwriting fellow at The Juilliard School. 

DANIEL AUKIN (Adaptor) is a New York-based director. Winner of three OBIE Awards, recent work includes the acclaimed Broadway revival of Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love with Sam Rockwell and Nina Arianda and Joshua Harmon’s Admissions (Lincoln Center Theater, London’s West End). World premieres include Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews and Skintight; Abe Koogler’s Fulfillment Center; Dan LeFranc’s Rancho Viejo; Melissa James Gibson’s Placebo, What Rhymes with America, Suitcase and [Sic]; The Fortress of Solitude by Michael Friedman and Itamar Moses from the novel by Jonathan Lethem; Sam Shepard’s Heartless; Amy Herzog’s 4000 Miles; Marius von Mayenburg’s The Ugly One (U.S. premiere); Itamar Moses’ Back Back Back; Mark Schultz’s Everything Will Be Different; Mac Wellman’s Cat’s-Paw, Quincy Long’s The Year of the Baby and Maria Irene Fornes’ Molly’s Dream. Also, Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge (Arena Stage) and Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine (La Jolla Playhouse). Formerly the Artistic Director of Soho Rep in New York (1998-2006), where he developed and produced world premieres by Richard Maxwell, Young Jean Lee, Thomas Bradshaw, Anne Washburn and Jordan Harrison, among many others. He has directed productions at Lincoln Center Theater, Soho Rep, Roundabout Theatre Company, Atlantic Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, Dallas Theater Center, Arena Stage and Woolly Mammoth, and has participated in development programs at Sundance Theater Lab, the O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference and New York Stage and Film.

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