PAPERS, PLEASE: A 20th CENTURY ODYSSEY 

Papers Please Inc. is a non-profit arts/education company, formed 2018 after the Premiere of Two Pianos: Playing for Life, which re-creates an extended Jewish family's first-person journeys through tumultuous cultural, political and economic events that shaped the West's 20th Century. 

Our initial goal: bring Two Pianos creations to broader audiences in the U.S. and abroad.  Our overall mission: design, produce and present focused, history-themed performances, programs, exhibits and publications with educational content that highlights the past's relevance to today's news. To fulfill that goal we work (and sometimes partner) with local officials, institutions, museums, libraries and non-profit organizations whose purpose is to educate about, reconcile with, and memorialize vanished lives and times.  

This mission predated Papers Please and Two Pianos.  It began while we still were discovering source materials, with 2012 PowerPoint presentations in Leipzig Germany and a 2015 exhibit at the Leipzig State Library co-sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute.  When COVID-19 suspended Two Pianos live performances, Papers Please created Penn Convoy Press to publish A Border Town in Poland (2021), Firebird (2023), and related nonfiction books. 

Our Board and Advisory Committee include representatives of the Levin-Hoffman families (descendants of the main characters), a former Director of Planned Giving for the Metropolitan Opera (NYC), and a former board member of the Raoul Wallenberg Committee (U.S.).

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