testimonials

Joyce Carol Oates
Writer, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

“Distant Survivors is quintessential Heyen poetry; incendiary, intransigent, challenging and provocative.” 

Anita Donovan
The Jewish Times, Philadelphia

“The offering is darkly disturbing and not for the faint of heart, but it is poetic and absorbing.  The cast is excellent throughout, with a direct passion not often found on modern stages.” 

Jan Zlotnik Schmidt
SUNY/New Paltz Distinguished Teaching Professor

“The play is a masterful and compelling weave of history, poetry, and second-generation witnessing.  The work explores with sensitivity and depth the stance of a second-generation German-American who feels the burden of the Holocaust…a profound and moving theatrical experience.”

Kerstin Steitz
Ph.D., Assistant Professor of German, Department of World Languages and Cultures, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA

“The offering is darkly disturbing and“I thought it was an excellent performance and feel incredibly lucky that you visited my class and discussed your play with the students, and that we got to see the performance. This is really a unique learning opportunity and I wish we could provide similar experiences for our students every semester.”  not for the faint of heart, but it is poetic and absorbing.  The cast is excellent throughout, with a direct passion not often found on modern stages.” 

Abby Johnson
Education Chair, Vassar Jewish Union Board Religious and Spiritual Life, Vassar College, NY

“Bill Heyen’s poetry is important for people to hear, especially for college students who are ready to grapple with the same issues as he does in his poetry.”

Archibald MacLeish
American poet and Librarian of Congress (1892-1982)

“Heyen is himself an American.  But he is an American who is the son of a German of the generation which produced the Nazis and the nephew of a Nazi flyer shot down over Russia, and the question, What is man? becomes for him the more agonizing question, What am I?”