Our Class by Tadeusz Słobodzianek (review)

Much ink has been spilled probing whether the nuance and complexity of stage embodiment can explicate historical events. Theater J’s production of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Our Class demonstrates theatre’s ability to do so by creating a polychoral representation of the past. In so doing, the production destabilized a monolithic “history” in favor of varied histories, all based on competing narratives from the same evidentiary base. The script’s subject—relations between Polish citizens of Jewish and Catholic backgrounds before and after the Holocaust—raises the stakes of this destabilization, since accurate characterizations of this tragedy are imperative to understanding the twentieth century. Theater J’s Our Class particularly utilized dramaturgy, design, and direction to achieve its polyvalent effect.

Composed of fourteen scenes, titled “Lessons,” Our Class investigates Polish small-town life through ten characters, who are evenly divided between Jewish and Catholic backgrounds. Short, polyphonic episodes composed mainly of direct address describing past actions flow chronologically from 1926 to 2003. The ensemble structure allows characters to contradict one another as they simultaneously present different perspectives on the same events, creating a composite story that is stubbornly incongruous. The play’s events stretch from Poland’s post–World War I independence to its World War II invasions and the murder of the town’s Jews by local Catholics under Nazi rule. The surviving characters tell of their existence under communism, of a twenty-first-century memorial of the World War II pogrom, and, finally, of the remaining two characters’ deaths from old age. These onstage events were framed by dramaturgy that juxtaposed the production against history texts concerning the same periods, creating a multivalent frame through which to view the play.

The dramaturgy most available to spectators was seven full pages of notes in the program, each emphasizing the script’s relationship with other historical texts. Dramaturg Stephen Spotswood devotes two pages to an essay, “Challenging Collective Memory: The Publication of Neighbors.” Neighbors is Jan Gross’s 2000 revolutionary book that challenged Polish narratives about citizens not partaking in Nazi atrocities. Published to much acclaim and contestation, Neighbors demonstrates that Polish Catholics killed Polish Jews in the Nazi-occupied town of Jedwabne. Our Class describes a massacre closely following Gross’s account, although varying in important ways. For instance, Spotswood begins his dramaturgical note with a quote from Gross: “One day, in July 1941, half the population of a small East European town murdered the other half—some 1,600 men, women and children.” This quote rings in spectators’ ears when, during Our Class, several characters state:

Abram:

Sixteen hundred people? Women, children, old people. … Dear God.

Zygmunt:

It was never sixteen hundred. No chance. Not even if we’d have packed them in there like herrings …

Heniek:

Hardly even a thousand. Seven hundred tops. Maybe not even as many as that.

(51)

In moments like these, the dramaturgy juxtaposed different representations of the past: Gross’s, Słobodzianek’s, and historians’ who, according to Spotswood’s note, challenge Gross’s claims. In so doing, Our Class calls attention to the act of history-making occurring onstage.

The design similarly created an equivocal environment within a realist set representing the present, and expressionist lights signifying the past. The unit set by Misha Kachman accurately depicted an antiquated and abandoned classroom from 1926 Poland, including rough-hewn, planked floorboards, faded, pastel-colored bentwood chairs, a small scuffed wooden table, and a ragged Polish flag. Daniel MacLean Wagner’s expressionistic lighting design, on the other hand, utilized sharp contrasts, footlights casting long shadows upstage, and exaggerated color, all of which hauntingly matched the moods of past events described by the characters. The set and lights combined the past and present simultaneously within a single space.

This environment allowed the play’s direction to juxtapose representations of history by combining realistic direct address with abstract imagery. Most of the script is composed of succinct past-tense, declarative statements about historical events. Derek Goldman’s direction, however...