Gordana Rashovich Rekindles Obie-Winning ‘Shayna Maidel’ Role

“I thought I would find it all very distracting and too pretty to concentrate on the Holocaust here in West Hollywood,” says actress Gordana Rashovich. “But I went to the Simon Wiesenthal Center and I watched a show about Hitler on TV, so there was no problem refocusing.”

Rashovich is repeating her haunting, Obie Award-winning performance in Barbara Lebow’s acclaimed drama “A Shayna Maidel,” currently playing at the Tiffany Theater in West Hollywood. Set in New York City in 1946, “Shayna Maidel” tells the story of two Jewish sisters, one brought up in the United States and the other a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp in Poland, and their father, who reunite after a separation of 20 years. Rashovich plays Luisa, the fragile, painfully thin and ghostly pale survivor, haunted by the memories of her dead mother, baby daughter and best friend, and obsessed with finding her missing husband.

The actress originated the role of Luisa five years ago at the Hartford Stage in Connecticut and appeared in the hit Off-Broadway production for nearly a year. Rashovich finds working with a new cast and director (Deborah LaVine) stimulating. “It’s like visiting an old friend in a foreign country, someone you don’t get to see on a daily basis. You go back and the same things are rekindled, the same kind of friendships, the same kind of bonds.”

Rashovich prepared for her role by reading books and watching films on the Holocaust. “I am a little shy about asking direct questions to survivors,” she says. “If they are interested in telling me things, I will sit there. But reading is private. You can do it at home and you can personalize it.”

She also drew on her European trips as a youngster (her father is Yugoslav, her mother American). “I always heard war stories there,” she remembers. “These people didn’t forget World War II. It was in their back yard. I will never forget those stories--how people had to hide in the forest and eat wood to survive. I think that left an indelible impression upon me.”