An incredible story of kindness in war

It was Christmas night, 1914.

War-weary soldiers, hungry, tired and cold, were missing their families and the comfort of home.

It was quiet on the Western Front, then a German soldier walked into No Man’s Land singing “Stille Nacht,” commencing a historic moment when rivals put down their rifles and embraced each other as brothers.

“It’s pretty fascinating,” said Laura Little, executive director of Laura Little Theatrical Productions in Coeur d’Alene. “Nobody wanted to kill each other the next day, or even the next week.”

This powerful true World War I story was first brought to the stage by Peter Rothstein whose production of “All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914” premiered on Minnesota Public Radio in 2007 and has since been seen in many cities across the U.S., including Coeur d’Alene.

Little saw the show with her daughter at Lake City Playhouse about four years ago.

“We both fell in love with it,” she said. “It was one of those shows you walk out and you feel emotionally challenged, in a sense.”

Rothstein created “All is Calm” as a radio musical drama, using letters, journals, war documents, poetry and song to tell the story of the men who exchanged gifts and kindness with their enemies on Christmas.

“It makes you dig a little deeper about the holidays and about the world in which we live,” Little said, “and how to treat people in a more gentle fashion.”

Little couldn’t stop thinking about “All is Calm” and contacted George Green, Lake City Playhouse’s artistic director at the time, to inquire about the rights. They belonged to Rothstein, who Little knows through the National Alliance for Musical Theatre. She asked him why it had never been produced on or off Broadway, and he said no one had approached him about it.

“I said, ‘Consider yourself approached,’” Little said.

This November, Laura Little Theatrical Productions and Rothstein’s Theater Latté Da will give “All is Calm” its off-Broadway premiere, which will “open the floodgates for the show,” Little said.

“The fact that I get to share this with the world at this particular time in our nation, with everything that’s going on, is just a dream for me,” she said.

Little explained that many times, theaters won’t take on shows that don’t have New York name recognition because they are considered “new works” and too risky.

But the relatively new venue, the Sheen Center For Thought and Culture, had an opening and found that “All is Calm” aligned with its mission to explore human expression and challenge people intellectually, artistically and spiritually.

“Everything just fell into place like it was a meant-to-be project for me. It’s very rare for a theater to become available,” Little said. “Now, people in Germany can do it, people in France can do it, and that’s great for them. That’s going to be healing for them.”

Little said those who worked on “All is Calm” when it was performed at Lake City Playhouse should be incredibly proud.

“The quality was so high here that a producer fell in love with it enough to want to move forward with it,” she said. “That speaks volumes.”

The show runs through Dec. 30 and opens Nov. 9, just two days before the 100th anniversary of the end of the war.

“It changed a lot of people’s lives,” Little said. “If we can find the one thing positive, 100 years down the line, we’re sure trying to get that out.”

Info: www.alliscalm.org