UNIONTOWN ? After more than three years, nearly 100 performances and a trip to Poland to meet their heroine, three Uniontown students are about to end their run in a play about the Holocaust.

Sabrina Coons, Elizabeth Cambers and Megan Stewart have dedicated most of the last three years to “Life in a Jar,” a short play that depicts Irena Sendler’s courage in leading the rescue of 2,500 children from the Nazi-held Warsaw ghetto in Poland during World War II.

By unofficial estimates, more than 25,000 people have watched the play. It has been the subject of a documentary and earned media attention in Poland when the cast and crew visited Sendler, now 93 and living in Warsaw.

“A Catholic woman being discovered by Protestant kids who saved Jewish children,” history teacher Norm Conard said. “If this is not a story for the ages, I don’t know what is.”

“Life in a Jar” has changed the cast, the crew — and even the town in which it was born.

“This is a dream,” Cambers said. “Oh, it’s a dream.”

But all dreams come to an end. Earlier this month, Cambers and Stewart graduated from Uniontown High School. Coons, two years older, graduated from Fort Scott Community College, only a few miles from Uniontown.

History project

Stewart and Cambers were freshmen and Coons a junior when they came across a magazine article mentioning Sendler while hunting for a project to enter in the 2000 History Day competition.

Convinced that a person who possibly saved 2,500 children during World War II would not be widely known, the three girls and fellow freshman Gabrielle Bradbury began searching for the truth.

They learned Sendler was still alive and began trading letters with her. They wrote a play, using Sendler’s words and their research.

The play earned a trip to National History Day in Washington, D.C., where it caught the attention of national media. The students also flew to New York to perform for the Jewish Federation for the Righteous.

A teacher in suburban Kansas City was so moved by the students and the play that he raised money to send them and Conard to Poland to meet Sendler.

By then, family issues had forced Bradbury to leave the play. The student who replaced her also left the production. Conard now narrates portions, and the three performers have had to rework how they move around the stage.

Coons said she used to worry more about getting her lines right than what she was saying.

“Now, I think more about how to tailor the show to the audience,” she said.

She’s amazed that interest in the play remains so strong, Coons said. But deep down, she knows why.

“This story gives people hope that life won’t be … dark and grim,” she said.

Show will go on

“Life in a Jar” has changed Uniontown, too.

When she moved from Oklahoma City to the town of less than 300 residents several years ago, Coons said, she found the students close-minded and critical of anyone different from themselves.

Almost no one in Uniontown knew someone who was Jewish, and even now the entire school system has just one black student.

But in classroom discussions, cast and crew say, Uniontown students are more tolerant of different attitudes and lifestyles than they once were.

Community support for “Life in a Jar” is so strong that performances will continue even after the three founding cast members depart. The cast has been expanded with younger students, and a new “Irena” has been selected: Kathleen Meara, who will be a high school senior next year in nearby Fort Scott.

Stewart, Cambers and Coons will all continue their roles on a summer tour that includes stops in Detroit, New York, Connecticut and West Virginia. But then it will be time to hand over the reins.

The play will be rewritten and expanded to a half-hour, using the 3,000 pages of interviews and notes that fill two filing cabinets at the school.

It’s exciting to see the play go on, Stewart said.

“If it was based on our acting, it would probably end with us,” she said. “But it’s the story.”