Photography by C. Stanley
The last American performances of Tadeusz Słobodzianek's Our Class are staged by the Theatre J at the JCC in Washington, D.C. Written in 2009, and based on one of Poland’s most controversial historic findings, the play was presented with Poland's most prestigious literary prize, the Nike award as the first theatre script in history
The US production of the play takes place at the Jewish Community Center and it is directed by Derek Goldman, based on the English transcription of Słobodzianek's text from Ryan Craig.
The Polish playwright Tadeusz Słobodzianek based his work on Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, a 2001 book by Jan Gross, a Polish American history professor at Princeton. He asserted that 1,600 Jews of Jedwabne were not burned to death in a barn in 1941 by the Nazis as previously believed, but by their fellow Poles. Słobodzianek's play is one of the first works invoking the Jedwabne atrocity. The writer gathered most of the details from the aforementioned book, but this real-life material underwent a far-reaching process of transformation. In 14 scenes/lessons Słobodzianek follows a group of Poles and Jews who were classmates before the war, in a small town rather like Jedwabne - telling their story from those days until our times.
Słobodzianek thus commented on this work:
One must constantly confront the trauma of Polish-Jewish relations. I believe that it is possible to accomplish showing them in a different light, not in tragic and explicit manner, but in a way that would be more than just thought-provoking - a way that would induce a katharsis, leaving none indifferent to the subject.
The first showings of the American production were received with a standing ovation. The Washington Post released a lengthy review of the play from Peter Marks. The journalist writes that
Theater J plunges us into the stories of these 10 fictional characters in a three-hour production that is by turns fascinating, exasperating, exhausting, startling and, at all times, unsparing. One of the most astonishing facets of Słobodzianek’s 2007 play, translated by dramatist Ryan Craig, is its relentless cataloguing of doom, of the sorry arcs of virtually all of the lives it chronicles. "Cursed" is a word that comes to mind, though it’s the singularly hideous curse that half of the former schoolmates pronounce on the others that gives“Our Class its shape as a shaming national tragedy.
The journalist also notices interesting literary parallels:
Fusing devices reminiscent of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and, in a different way, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, the playwright withdraws from the dramatic action each of the former classmates at the point of their violent or natural deaths, but leaves them onstage, as barefoot ghosts who commingle in the spectral world with all the gentleness and grace that eluded their coexistence in ours.
Marks notices that the drama proceeds right to the lancing of a festering boil that the Polish guilt constitutes, and if the image is unpleasant, "well, Słobodzianek has no desire to shield us from events that curdle the blood." In his thorough examination of the piece, the journalist also addresses the heated reactions that were stirred by the initial publication of Gross' book. He quotes the words of Adam Michnik, who at the time commented in the New York Times that the controversy made it seem "as if the whole society was suddenly forced to carry the weight of this terrible 60-year-old crime, as if all Poles were made to admit their guilt collectively and ask for forgiveness."
Marks' enthusiastic review is not devoid of some critique, as he notices that the author's obsessive attention to detail in the personal accounts of the play's characters makes the spectator watch the clock, just as he could have had in real history classes at school. The journalist also points out that the decision to have all actors perform with a Polish accent resulted in an effect possibly contrary to the intended one – that of a lack of authenticity. And yet, the review concludes:
As Our Class is the purest kind of ensemble piece, singling out a performance or two feels like a violation. (...) The work here of lighting designer Daniel MacLean Wagner is worth special mention, however, as are contributions by consulting musicologist Bret Werb and composer Eric Shimelonis. Even after civility and humanity disappear, music, and the bracing voices of Our Class, rise up as one to reaffirm that 10 tormented souls sprang from the same soil.
Theater J is one of the most recognised Jewish theatres in the United States. It was founded to present works that "celebrate the distinctive urban voice and social vision that are part of the Jewish cultural legacy" as a self-mission. Theater J has been described by the New York Times as offering "professional polish, thoughtful dramaturgy and nervy experimentation," and by Hadassah Magazine as "one of the most successful and avant-garde" of contemporary American Jewish theaters. The company is also known for its record of premiering new works, and it was called by The New York Times "The Premier Theater for Premieres." It has previously staged plays from Richard Greenberg, Thomas Keneally, Robert Brustein, Wendy Wasserstein, Joyce Carol Oates and Ariel Dorfman.
Our Class
By Tadeusz Slobodzianek
Translated into English by Ryan Craig
Directed by Derek Goldman
Set design: Misha Kachman
lighting: Daniel MacLean Wagner
costumes: Ivania Stack
sound: James Bigbee Garver
choreography: Emma Crane Jaster
fight choreography: Joe Isenberg
dramaturgy: Stephen Spotswood
duration: About three hours.
The performance is shown from the 10th of October through to the 4th of November, 2012 at the DC Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th St. NW.
For more information, see: www.theaterj.org
The world premiere of Our Class. History in 14 lessons took place at the National Theatre in London in 2009, with numerous international productions to follow across the globe. The play was staged by the Theatre Studio 180 in Toronto, the Teatro Factoria Escncia Internacional in Barcelona, Madrid's Teatro Fernán Gómez, the Katon Theatre in Budapest, the Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia and the Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company. In 2012, the play also enjoyed its Italian premiere, with a production from Teatro Sala Uno in Rome and an award-winning showing at Tokyo's Bungaku-za theatre. Ondrej Spišák, a Slovak director who lives and works in Poland staged the play's Polish premiere in Warsaw’s Teatr na Woli in 2010.
Source: PAP, www.labodram.pl, Washington Post, press release