In 2008, Polish playwright Tadeusz Slobodznek wrote a play about the lessons we learn from historical events. He called it “Our Classroom. History in 14 Lessons.” The ten characters in the play are real people who lived in the Polish town of Jeddawna.
First bell, first day at school. Who doesn’t remember them? Excited and hopeful boys and girls tell stories about themselves, their parents, and their dreams. Thus begins the shared story of their lives and thus begins the play “In Our Class.” The ten characters in the play will become friends, they will go crazy, compete, reconcile, save each other, betray each other, love, be jealous, and hate. Only one thing prevents them: severing the invisible thread that connects their lives. As they themselves say: A classmate is like a family member. Director Natalia Kovaleva: “In 2000, J. T. Gross’s book “Neighbors” about the destruction of the Jewish community in the city of Jedwabne was published. The book shocked Polish society and divided it into two camps: those who wanted and those who did not want to admit their guilt. For the Poles, this is the history of their country, but there were also difficult moments in the history of Russia. Even today, sometimes we have to choose a side and take responsibility for our actions. When I was working on the play, I asked myself: What would I have done? Characters in the play wonder: What could I have done? But this is not an answer. Wherever a person lives under conditions of dictatorship, he ceases to be a person and becomes a wolf who sows destruction around him. A theater performance is the best way to draw lessons from history. The viewer sees before him human figures who reveal the entire lives of people and analyze the connection between the past, the present, and the future.
“Tadeusz Slobodznek is not a neutral historian. He is concerned with eternal human issues and he fights for the purity of the human soul. The play “Our Class” won Poland’s major literary prize Nike. When public figure and journalist Adam Michnik presented the prize to the playwright, he said: As long as there are such writers in Poland, I look to the future with optimism.”
The show is in Russian with Hebrew subtitles.
Director – Natalia Kovaleva
Designer – Alexander Borovsky
The composer – Claudia Trebrina
Poetry – Daria Shcherbakova
Choreographer – Irina Filippova
