Our Class by Tadeusz Słobodzianek is the first polish drama awarded with the Nike - the most important literary award in Poland. The European Theatre Convention ranked Our Class among the best contemporary European plays written during 2009 and 2010
Polish playwright, Tadeusz Slobodzianek, confronts his country's involvement in the atrocities of the last century and follows the one-time classmates - amidst weddings, parades, births, deaths, emigrations and reconciliations - into the repercussions of war.
1,600 Jews were massacred in the small Polish town of Jedwabne in the summer of 1941. Such is the starting-point for this play. The play follows the fortunes of 10 students in a school class together, Catholics and Jews, from 1925 to the present. As the classmates grow up, their country is torn apart by invading armies, first Soviet and then Nazi. Internal grievances deepen as fervent nationalism develops; friends betray each other and violence escalates.
Why does the boy who cut out the paper heart and wrote a love poem for the girl from his class, a few years later tie her hands and threaten to shoot her if she tried to escape? What happened that nationality, religion and ideology turned out to be more important than friendship? When did a classmate become a stranger? What happened with this class? The story about 20th century Poland inspired by true events.
The world premiere of Our Class took place in National Theatre in London in 2009. In 2010 Our Class was staged at Teatr Na Woli in Warsaw under direction of Ondrej Spišak who worked on other Słobodzianek's plays such as Merlin. Another story, Prophet Ilja, Malambo. Argentinian storyand Dream of a bedbug.
Our Class doesn't try to teach anyone. This story is told to provoke questions. The drama, referring to the events in eastern Poland, is a universal story understood in places where deep ethnical conflicts arise and private life must conform to politics.
- O.Spišak, director of the performance in Warsaw.
Victims and perpetrators are bound together in a perverse intimacy brought about by a disastrous collision of life histories. Torture is the most blatant example of a totally perverted relationship, the individuals bound together in fake intimacy, but either a calculated crime or a mere casual, callous act of indifferent violence can bind people together in a marriage of memory, the deep wound of the victim and the nagging dreams of the perpetrator each commemorating the dreadful moment they came together. In the popular view, perpetrators are very different from the rest of us. They are heartless, cruel, and beyond the pale of civilised society because of some fundamental lack of humanity.
- From James Thompson's programme article of Our Class in London.
Our Class / Nasza klasaby Tadeusz Słobodzianek; Director: Gábor Máté; Set design: Balázs Cziegler; CostumesAnni Füzér; Music: László Sáry; Choreography: Péter Takátsy; Starring: Hanna Pálos, Réka Pelsőczy, Erika Bodnár, Viktor Dénes, Péter Takátsy,Zoltán Rajkai, János Bán, László Szacsvay, Dénes Ujlaki and Péter Haumann.
After premieres in London, Warsaw, Toronto and Barcelona, Our Classgoes to Budapest's Katona József Színhaz Theatre directed by Gábor Máté.
The premiere in Budapest is held on the 7th of October 2011. The play returns to Warsaw with a performance on the 16th of October 2011 at the Teatr Na Woli.
Katona József Színhaz Theatre
1052 Budapest, Petőfi Sándor u. 6.
Közönségszolgálat: (1) 318-3269
Source: press release