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EDWARD EINHORN
A Film Directed by
Written by NAOMI PATZ THE D IN THE TEREZIN GHETTO IN 1944
LAST
BASED ON A DARK COMEDY CREATE
by KAREL SVENK
CYCLIST
NEW FILM “THE LAST CYCLIST” BRINGS

TO LIFE LOST HOLOCAUST PLAY
. “The Last Cyclist” -- a uniquely immersive new film that captures
LOST.
a stage performance of a rediscovered dark comedy written in 1944 in
the Nazi concentration camp called Terezin -- will be ready for release
never in the spring.
A scathing satire in which bicyclists are blamed for all of society’s

ills and systematically hunted down and murdered, “The Last Cyclist”
was banned following its Terezin dress rehearsal. Lost to time, the
script by Karel Svenk was painstakingly reconstructed by the writer
and producer Naomi Patz beginning in 1995.
Now performed throughout the country, “The Last Cyclist” had its New York premiere in 2013. The
critically acclaimed production, directed by Edward Einhorn, was restaged in front of a live audience at La
Mama in 2017. Shot over a four day period, this striking commedia dell’arte-inspired performance allows
audiences to bear witness as if we too are attending that fateful dress rehearsal, and are slowly, like
everyone around us, falling prey to the baseless immorality of a madman. The film is a remarkable new
addition to the historical record of Nazi atrocities, as well as a fascinating artifact of Jewish defiance.
VIVID PROOF OF JEWISH RESILIENCE

A searing critique of Holocaust lunacy brought startlingly to
life by Einhorn and his cast, “The Last Cyclist” offers powerful,
poignant evidence of resistance to the Nazis by Jewish
inmates under horrific circumstances.
Says Patz, “The kaleidoscopic experience of this bitter satire

brings today’s audiences startlingly close to the spirited
resilience of the inmates at Terezin, who worked hard to
maintain hope and a sense of their own humanity as they
fought despair in the face of indescribable evil. And yes, the
message that underlies the plot -- an allegory on the evils of
bigotry and bullying -- is terrifyingly appropriate today.”
IMMERSIVE RESTAGING
OF BANNED TEREZIN PLAY
CAPTURED FOR THE SCREEN
Conceived to engage, captivate and inspire audiences
today,,“The Last Cyclist” enjoyed a critically acclaimed
three-week run in 2013, at the West End Theater in
New York. Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times
called the production, an “intriguing exercise of
Holocaust history,” observing that the play is “theater
as a chance to bear witness.”
In August 2017, the writer Naomi Patz and the director

Edward Einhorn came together again to film the
remount of the production (with nearly all of its orig-
inal cast) in front of a live audience, at the legendary
experimental theater La MaMa, over a four day period.
THE STORY
In “The Last Cyclist,” a group of concentration camp inmates
perform an absurdist comedy about escapees from an insane
asylum who hate their bike-riding physician and target all bicycle
riders whom they blame for the misfortunes afflicting the world.
A schlemiel of a hero who buys a bike to impress his girlfriend
becomes the lunatics’ prime enemy. The leader of the escapees
and her followers exploit the growing anti-cyclist hysteria and
plot to eliminate all cyclists by sending them to Horror Island
where they will be not-so-slowly starved to death.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

Featured among the cast of 11, playing multiple
roles, are Jenny Lee Mitchell, Patrick Pizzolo-
russo, and Lynn Berg. The director of photogra-
phy and editor of this intimate, multi-camera
capture of the stage production is Alexander
Jorgensen. The play’s incidental music and
the film’s score are composed by the award-
winning composer Stephen Feigenbaum, whose
work was commissioned through the Terez-
in Music Foundation. Feigenbaum adapted
Svenk’s stirring Terezin March, which became
the unofficial anthem of the prisoners interned
in the camp. (Known in German at Theresien-
stadt, Terezin was a forced labor camp serving
as a holding place for transports to Auschwitz
and other death camps in the East.)
Through a remarkable process of cultural an-

thropology, Naomi Patz was able to reconstruct
the play based on a 1965 essay about theater in
Terezin by Jana Sedova, a well-known post-war
Czech theater and film actress who was prob-
ably the only survivor of the original Cyclist
cast. In her essay, Sedova called the play “our
most courageous production.” Four years earli-
er Sedova had recreated the play from memory,
staging it at the avant-garde Rokoko Theater in
Prague. Though infused with communist ideol-
ogy that wasn’t in the original, the 1961 script
still guided Patz in her quest to faithfully sal-
vage Svenk’s original.
ABOUT TEREZIN AND THE PLAY’S CREATOR

The Nazis converted an 18th century walled garrison town 40 miles from Prague into a concentration
camp known as the Terezin Ghetto. Terezin was unique. Despite horrific conditions, prisoners were
permitted a measure of cultural freedom – and what they created was extraordinary. Because of its
high percentage of internationally known Jewish intellectuals and artists, the Nazis were able to ex-
ploit Terezin as a propaganda tool to draw attention away from the secret death camps, cynically
misleading the outside world into believing prominent Jews were not only being protected from the
ravages of the war, but were allowed to write, lecture and perform – freedoms unheard of elsewhere
under Nazi rule.
“The Last Cyclist” was banned by the Jewish Council of Elders, the internal puppet government cho-
sen and controlled by the SS. Its author was a charismatic young avant-garde writer and director from
Prague, Karel Svenk, who wrote and staged numerous cabaret and theater performances in Terez-
in. Described by survivors as a cross between Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, the beloved Svenk
was 28 when he died on a forced march westward from Buchenwald as the Nazis retreated from the
advancing Red Army a few weeks before the end of the war in Europe.
WHY NOW?
“Sadly, the obligation to remember the horrors of the
Holocaust and the need to confront the unexpectedly
virulent prejudices in our own society are becoming
one and the same today,” says writer Naomi Patz.
“We believe a satirical work like
‘The Last Cyclist,’ which is often
as laugh-out-loud funny as it
is horrific, can heighten and
focus our resolve to confront
the horrors of extremism.”
Running Time: 90 minutes.

THE
LAST
Filmed at La MaMa in New York
over four days in August 2017.
CYCLISST

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EDWARD EINHORN

NEW FILM “THE LAST CYCLIST” BRINGS

never in the spring.

A scathing satire in which bicyclists are blamed for all of society’s

VIVID PROOF OF JEWISH RESILIENCE

Says Patz, “The kaleidoscopic experience of this bitter satire

In August 2017, the writer Naomi Patz and the director

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

Through a remarkable process of cultural an-

ABOUT TEREZIN AND THE PLAY’S CREATOR

Running Time: 90 minutes.

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