Liliana, my dear friend: there is nothing we can do,

we are all overwhelmed by what happened to us

and there is no hope for anyone.

With these few lines, Primo Levi , in 1986, dismisses a brief and unpublished exchange of letters begun by Liliana Segre after the publication of "The Drowned and the Saved." The concentration camp experience had had opposing effects on both men, developing in one a cultured pessimism, and in the other an unflagging hope. "The Great Nothing" explores the genesis of these ideals, retracing some of the biographies of both men and imagining their exchange as a dialogue on the train back to Italy.

The show received the approval of the Segre family, in the person of the eldest son, Alberto Belli Paci .