Stefan Rybak was a workaholic with a history of success in the entertainment, media, and marketing industry, until he had to confront an unscheduled, inescapable interruption to his business plans. After Stefan collapses and is rushed to the emergency room, a doctor insists that he must schedule major heart surgery to correct a previously undiagnosed congenital heart defect.

Confronted with his own mortality, and uncertain about how to handle this devastating new development in his life, Stefan appeals to the memories of his late, strong-willed, and highly protective mother Maria-who, as a young Polish girl, was forced into slave labor by the Nazis during World War II. During post-surgical recovery, Stefan decides to write a book about his experience. He learns that his mother shielded him, both as a child and as a man, from the most difficult and traumatic realities that she had to cope with during and after the war. Stefan’s mother was a remarkable, but deeply flawed, woman and, to complete the book, Stefan must come to terms with her good and bad choices, her alcoholism, her turbulent marriage and divorce, and her enduring spirituality.

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2ND ACT is a monthly storytelling series featuring ordinary people sharing the extraordinary things they are doing in the 2ND (half) ACT of their lives! Inspirational, experiential and comical, these after-50 life stories will ignite your own imagination to join the growing community of 2ND ACTers!

Stories will be 45–60 minutes in length followed by Q&A with the audience.

Palace Theater
100 East Main St,
Waterbury, CT 06702

https://www.palacetheaterct.org/shows/2nd-act/2nd-act-stefan-rybak/