The poster for the Hungarian production of Our Class, courtesy of the Katona Jozsef Szinhaz
An award ceremony at the National Theatre in Budapest presented the prizes for the best performative achievements of the previous season. The Theatre Critics’ Award honoured the stagings of Tadeusz Słobdzianek’s Our Class at the Hungarian Katon Theatre, directed by Gabor Mate
The premiere showings of the play at Katon took place in October 2011. A review of the play for the Nepszabadsag commented. "The precise and thought provoking direction from Gabor Mate succeeds in making this Polish story become out own by no coincidence. It is not only due a parallel history. What’s most significant is not that which we recognise in our past, but that which we see in the present: stoking up political passions and their nearly automatic escalation, furious hate and savage lynches in the name of an ideology."
Słobodzianek's play is one of the first works invoking the Jedwabne atrocity. The writer gathered most of the details from books by historians and journalists (including Jan T. Gross and Anna Bikont), 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.
Our Class tells the story of collective guilt, and a truth that nobody seems to have a need of understanding. It tells a story that cannot be judged, cannot be reversed, and cannot even be explained. The play takes place at such a moment in history, when, following emotional speeches of a crazed nationalism, and given religious and ethnic differences in various cities and towns, previous friends become ultimate enemies overnight.
The Katon József Színhaz Theatre is the most acclaimed Hungarian stage, and its main director since 1989 is Gábor Máté. The theatre’s repertoire lists both classic and contemporary plays. In the 1980s, today’s most signifiacant playwrights and directors were beginning their creative paths at the Katon. Exemplary plays, such as Chickenhead from György Spiró and Michály Kornis’ Halleluyah which were first staged there are now regarded as classic pieces of the Hungarian theatre.
The international premiere of the Our Class. History in 14 Lessons. Was staged in at The National Theatre in London. The play was also presented by the Studio 180 Theatre in Toronto, Factoria Escencia Internacional in Barcelona, at the Wilma Theater w Philadelphia and also at the Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company. Spanish audiences were able to view stagings of Nostra Classe as part of the Grec 2011 Festival de Barcelona, when it was produced by the FEI theatre troupe, and later on, the Madrid-based Teatro Fernán Gómez also staged its version of the play. The Italian premiere of the piece took place in Rome on the 4th of June, 2012.
The text of the Polish playwright which was written in 2009 and was the first theatre play to be presented with the prestigious Nike Literary Award has been widely staged across numerous theatres worldwide. Its recent production at the Japanese Bungaku-za was shorlisted as one of the top five productions of the first half of 2012.
The Polish version of the play was directed by Teatr Na Woli’s Ondrej Spišák in 2010.
Editor: SRS
Source: press release, culture.pl