Music Born of Ocean Parkway

Musician and songwriter Artie Butler goes back to his Brooklyn roots for inspiration, and growing up near Church and Ocean Parkway had a lot to offer his new production. The Brooklyn Eagle explains "The People in the Picture" is a new musical about "an elderly Polish Jew in New York City remembering her Yiddish theater troupe’s travails during the Holocaust." Butler says he could never forget the reminders of what his neighbors went through:

“There were benches on Ocean Parkway where people used to sit near my house. The first time I saw older people with the numbers on their arms, it stuck out in my brain,” Butler said. “Just the sight of the numbers on the arm, — it’s insanity, it stayed with me. It manifested itself into my music, into my writing, into my process, my sensibility. It comes out in my music.”