John Fasile

That's Marshall Palett.

He's a director and writer and choreographer on Broadway.

And like me, he's spent a lot of time thinking about what happened on these train rides.

I mean, they're so theatrical.

And like on these train rides, there would be German soldiers in the same car as the kids.

He had to communicate to them without words.

He would use his body.

He would make funny faces.

And then he took that experience and built a career on it.

That sounds a little crazy, but he did start performing as a mime, like, literally the second the war ended.

So as I was finishing up Gregory's story and learning all this stuff about Marcel Marceau, I learned that Marshall had co-written and directed a play called Marcel on the Train, starring Ethan Slater from Wicked, that was running on Broadway.

And the play dramatizes these train rides.

It fills in what we don't know with imagination and then bits that Marcel would later perform on stage.

What sort of...

bits does he do in this way to keep the children calm?

What did you imagine?

Like you're angry, move your hand, you're angry, brows are up, corner of your mouth is turned down, and then you like put your hand back and it's a smile, that kind of thing.

So Marshall is describing here an actual piece that Marcel would perform.

Wow.

That's deep.