José Espinosa (left) plays Rysiek, a Polish revolutionary, who directs his ire at suspected informant and former classmate Jakub Katz (Stephen Ochsner).
On July 10, 1941, as many as 1,600 Jewish men, women, and children were rounded up and packed into a barn in Jedwabne, a small town in northwest Poland. The locked barn was set ablaze, and everyone inside perished. The pogrom is notable (and controversial) because, unlike similar atrocities in Nazi-occupied cities and villages, the massacre was not carried out solely by officers of the Third Reich or by Soviet nationals. The perpetrators were friends, associates, and neighbors of the Jews with whom they had lived peaceably and side-by-side before the occupation. Although not explicitly about Jedwabne, Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Our Class follows the basic outlines of the historical events, and under Igor Golyak’s resourceful and potent direction, the play shows that our most barbarous enemies may indeed dwell among us.
Menachem (Andrey Burkovskiy, right) comforts fellow classmate Zocha (Tess Goldwyn).
Our Class follows a group of Polish classmates, five of whom are Jewish and five Catholic. The script, which has been adapted by Norman Allen (from a literal translation by Catherine Grovesnor), begins in 1926 when the students are in the U.S. equivalent of the first grade, and it comprises 14 scenes—or, lessons, as they are delineated here. The play ends with the death of the last member of the cohort in 2003. As the children grow older and as the political atmosphere becomes more and more toxic, classroom roughhousing and schoolyard crushes transform into brutal physical attacks and violent sexual assaults. As the decades progress, the remaining classmates are forced to confront their own trauma, guilt, and contrition stemming from the town’s dark and shameful secrets.
Gus Birney plays Dora, a young Jewish woman who is spurned by her neighbors, classmates, and husband. Photographs by Pavel Antonov.
To his credit, Słobodzianek does not wholly exalt the Jewish victims, nor does he completely demonize the Catholic aggressors. For instance, one of the classmates, Menachem (Andrey Burkovskiy), is Jewish and has a wife and baby, but selfishly he goes into hiding without them. His benefactor, Zocha (Tess Goldwyn), a Catholic, is less than magnanimous. When Menachem’s wife, Dora (Gus Birney), pleads with Zocha to take her baby into hiding, Zocha turns her back on the poor woman, confessing, “All the way home I thought, ‘What am I supposed to do? Raise someone else’s baby?’”
Similarly, Catholic Władek (Ilia Volok) sequesters his Jewish classmate Rachelka (Alexandra Silber) from the Nazis, and he determines the only way she can be safe is by converting to Catholicism. With the support of his three murdering and rabidly anti-Semitic classmates, Rysiek (José Espinosa), Heniek (Will Manning), and Zygmunt (Elan Zafir), Władek successfully drills the catechism into Rachelka, who takes the new name Marianna and survives the Holocaust as Władek’s wife.
One of the students, Abram (Richard Topol), moves to America and graduates from yeshiva. He is the least scathed by the upheaval in Europe. In fact, Abram is oblivious to the hatred that has riven his old community, and he continues to send cheerful letters to his old friend Jakub Katz (Stephen Ochsner), an intellectual and revolutionary martyr. In his last correspondence with Jakub, Abram blithely writes, “I haven’t forgotten my Polish, though English is my language now. But tell me your news! How is our class? Why does no one write to me? I’m eager to hear how everyone is faring, and I send my warmest greetings.”
Golyak’s boundlessly imaginative staging and the ensemble’s marvelously nuanced performances balance epic theatricality with heartbreaking intimacy. The scenic design by Jan Pappelbaum consists primarily of an oversized blackboard in which names, biblical verses, and propagandistic symbols are scrawled or projected. (Eric Dunlap designed the projections and Adrea Mincic conceived the alternatingly whimsical and threatening chalk drawings. Adam Silverman’s evocative lighting, Sasha Ageeva’s deceptively simple costumes, and Ben Williams’s astute sound design enrich the experience.)
Ilia Volok (left) plays the conflicted Władek and Alexandra Silber is Rachelka, a Jewish woman who converts to Christianity to evade the wrath of the Nazis and her anti-Semitic neighbors.
The stark and industrial space provides Golyak with a veritable playground to apply elements of documentary theater, such as the use of video and having performers read from their scripts, as well as devised theater practices, including a giant sheet that alters from movie screen to bundled baby to shroud. One of the most inventive and ominously humorous bits includes a stage full of balloons upon which the company members have drawn cartoonish faces to represent the gawking and taunting neighbors as the Jews are led into the fateful barn.
Słobodzianek’s play was first produced in 2009 but is just now receiving its New York premiere. With anti-Semitism on the rise across the globe, wars raging in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and political extremism dividing American communities, 15 years after its inception, Our Class reminds us that we still have a lot to learn.
Our Class runs through Feb. 4 at the BAM Fisher Building, Fishman Space (321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and at 7:30 p.m. Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets, visit bam.org/our-class.
Playwright: Tadeusz Słobodzianek
Adaptation: Norman Allen
Director: Igor Golyak
Scenic Design: Jan Pappelbaum
Costume Design: Sasha Ageeva
Lighting Design: Adam Silverman
Sound Design: Ben Williams
Projections Design: Eric Dunlap
Composer: Anna Drubich
Choreographer: Or Schraiber
