The play was born when playwright and director Emily Mann set out to record a relative's personal remembrance of the Holocaust. Instead, she discovered Annulla Allen, a Jewish woman who passed herself off as Aryan during the Nazi regime in Germany, and decided to dramatize her life. According to press materials, Allen was "a Polish Jew married to an Austrian Jew, [who] managed to elude the authorities, and even get her husband released from Dauchau. Decades ahead of her time, she dreamt of starting the first political Women's Party as early as 1939, and actually wrote her own six-hour play on the subject of her life. Constantly moving as a child she learned seven languages, finally settling in London as a grown woman, which she adored."

Eileen De Felitta plays Anulla and Neva Small is "The Voice of Emily," the Interviewer.

Emily Mann is celebrating her 15th season as artistic director of the McCarter Theatre. She is the author of Greensboro (A Requiem), Execution of Justice, and Still Life. She wrote and directed Having Our Say, which ran on Broadway.