Contemporary American Theater Festival Artistic Director Peggy McKowen, right, listens as Kenneth Tigar talks about “The Happiest Man on Earth” in the Shepherdstown Opera House on July 14. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — When seasoned actor Kenneth Tigar heard that a memoir on the Holocaust was being turned into a one-man stage play by one of his favorite modern playwrights, Mark St. Germain, he knew he wanted to be in the production.

Part of the reason for this was his Jewish roots.

“I come from a Jewish family,” Tigar said. “The last of my ancestors to immigrate to the United States came over when she was about 12 in 1905 or 1906 from the Ukraine. I talked to her about it and asked her, ‘Why did you come to this country?’ She turned to me and said, ‘Because they were killing us.’ Everybody else in my family, that I’m aware of, came over here before then.

“I am sure that I have a lot of family spread all over eastern Europe, all of which was massacred, but I don’t know anything about them,” Tigar said. “I’m sure I had family members who died in the Holocaust; I just don’t know any details about it.”

The play, “The Happiest Man on Earth,” was titled after its memoir of the same name, which was published in 2020. It follows the life of Eddie Jaku, who grew up proud of his German heritage, only to then be shocked by the sight of his neighbors and fellow countrymen turning on him and his family, who were of Jewish ethnicity, during the Holocaust.

Kenneth Tigar brings the role of Eddie Jaku to life at the Shepherdstown Opera House during the Contemporary American Theater Festival this month. Tabitha Johnston

“This was about his life and the transition afterwards. If we were to put into the play all of the emotional steps that it took for him to become ‘The Happiest Man on Earth,’ it would last 98 years,” Tigar said of Jaku, who passed away at the age of 98 in 2021.

“The Happiest Man on Earth” was commissioned by Barrington Stage in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. It made its world premiere there in May 2023, before making its way to the Shepherdstown Opera House, as one of the four plays being produced by the Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) this month.

Tigar, who plays Jaku at CATF, said it was a bit of a rockier road to getting the part in the play’s premiere.

“I did know that I wanted to do this the minute that I heard about it,” Tigar said. “I had done one of Mark’s other plays, ‘Freud’s Last Session,’ which was just turned into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins. I’ve done four productions of that play, in various cities, and so I knew Mark had seen my acting. When I heard that he had a one-man show based on a Holocaust survivor, I knew I wanted to do it. So, I called my agent and said, ‘Get in touch with Mark, get in touch with the theater and tell them I want to do the play.’ Then, I heard nothing. My hunch is, they were looking for a big name to premiere the role.”

Eventually, about a month before the play’s premiere, Barrington Stage reached out and asked Tigar to take the role — which he did, gladly, in spite of having much less time to learn the role than he would have preferred.

“I am an actor who likes to have his lines learned before we start rehearsals. It gives you a running start. Then you can really do the hard work in rehearsals — you don’t have to worry about the other stuff,” Tigar said. “I knew that if I didn’t hear about it by March 15, I wouldn’t have enough time to learn my lines, so I told my agent, ‘If I don’t hear back from them by March 15, that’s it.’ But on April 1, they asked me, and I immediately said, ‘Yes.'”

The extra time that Tigar has been able to devote to his second production of “The Happiest Man on Earth” has only allowed him to further immerse himself in his role.

“This is someone who went through hell and came out shiny. You have to find some kind of equivalent or something that allows you to understand that emotional transition — how that could happen. As an actor, you have to understand what people feel and really do it, because if you don’t, the performance will fall flat and feel rote,” Tigar said, noting he remembers finding this understanding even with some difficult roles in the past, such as when he played Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler. “If I don’t feel it, then the audience isn’t going to feel it.”