"The Puppetmaster of Lodz," a play by Romanian playwright Gilles Segal and directed by Bruce Levitt, a professor in Cornell's Department of Theatre, Film and Dance, is being performed for the rest of this week in a Manhattan theater with four actors and more than a dozen puppets.

Set in 1950, the play is the story of Samuel Finkelbaum (played by Robert Zukerman), a Holocaust survivor who escapes from a concentration camp toward the end of World War II and finds refuge in an attic of a Berlin apartment house. Even though five years have passed since the war's end, Finkelbaum refuses to unlock his door; he is convinced that the war is still on, and nothing his landlady tells him convinces him that it is safe to come out.

"This is a play that Robert and I did 10 years ago in a theater upstate and revived as a reading last year with my little theater company, Mirth A, at the Jewish community center in Manhattan," said Levitt. "That's when Ardelle Striker of Blue Heron Theater sought us and invited us to partner with her in producing this play." The latest production is at the ArcLight Theater on West 71st Street until Dec. 23.

Contrary to what it may seem, the play is far from being a case of animated survivor's guilt. A master puppeteer by profession, Finkelbaum has been working on an autobiographical production that he intends to produce when the war is over. For five years, he has been consumed with making puppets -- the most effective of which is the life-size rag doll that represents his dead wife -- and uses them to illustrate scenes from his life.

The puppets were designed by Ralph Lee, founder of the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

"Ralph had designed the puppets for the original production 10 years ago. Fortunately, since we are doing the play in New York, this time he was available to be directly involved in the choreography and manipulation of the puppets," Levitt said.

One of the most interesting aspects of the play is the ease with which it combines tremendous suffering and loss with humor and witticism. According to Levitt, who has been the artistic director of the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival for six years, "A good playwright always ensures that comedy and tragedy live side by side. There is nothing better to dramatize the weight of tragedy than the edge of comedy."

Levitt's agile direction has attracted several faculty members and many Cornell New York City alumni to the theater.

The notion that stays with you long after the play is over is its timelessness (it was written 23 years ago). As playwright Segal points out in the program notes, the world is always the home to horrors, whether cataclysmic or comparatively small. However, he stresses, "facing the encroaching rise of barbarities, we have an obligation to continue to live, to continue to sing, to be happy, to laugh, to laugh, to laugh!"

For tickets, see http://www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/tickets.htm or call (212) 239-6200, (800) 432-7250 or (212) 307-4100.

Kanika Arora is a freelance writer in New York City.