The Theatre of the Holocaust, Volume 2: Six Plays

THE SURVIVOR AND THE TRANSLATOR

Leeny Sack zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXW THE SURVIVOR AND THE TRANSLATOR A solo theatre work about not having experienced the Holocaust, by a daughter of concentration camp survivors. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjih To Gina 1923-1989 Gdzie moja mama? Nie widzg mojej mamy. Gdzie, gdzie moja mama? Where is my mother? I don't see my mother. Where, where is my mother? ON zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Leeny Sack inzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSR The Survivor and the Translator. Photograph Author's Note zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWV The Survivor and the Translator: A solo theatre work about not having experienced the Holocaust, by a daughter of concentration camp survivors was created over a three-year period. It was fueled by disembodied memory and blood-connection, and by the intention to articulate and translate what had been spoken in my childhood home in Polish, in recently learned English, and in silence , into the language of performance. The text is conceived as three voices within one performer: The Survivor, The Translator, The Second Generation Performer. It is composed in the first section as a fragmented intertwining of my own words with the Polish testimony of my maternal grandmother , Rachela Rachman, and with cuttings of known and popular texts. These texts are based on or from "Let There Be Light/' a pamphlet by the Lubavitcher Women's Organization; The Last of the Just, by Andre Schwartz-Bart; The Kabir Book, versions by Robert Bly,- Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank; and "Trzy Listy," a Polish love song. They are invoked, recontextualized and absorbed into the family's holocaust. With the exception of signal words such as "Auschwitz" and "Mama," and the Wedding Recipe, the Polish in this section is not meant to be literally comprehended and is not literally translated. It is meant to be felt. Polish soundscapes surface out of English as subtext, highlight or counterpoint, and English text is juxtaposed with Polish testimony in the guise of translation. A narrative of my kinetic behavior is woven through the spoken text to provide the gestural as well as textual content of the performances. The uninterrupted testimony of the final section is from my purposely raw translations of raw conversations with my grandmother . Here I unite the voices and fragments with the intention 117 118 THEATRE OF THE HOLOCAUST of putting aside my personal resistances and conceptual conceits, and simply bearing witness. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJ The Survivor and the Translator premiered in 1980 at The Performing Garage in New York City with the deeply appreciated participation and support of Steven Borst, director, Sabrina Hamilton, production manager, Joel and Gina Sack, Sonia Alland, Alexander Alland, Jr., Chloe Wing, and Richard Schechner, all part of this "solo77 work. To N. Dee Fish and Laura Rosenberg I give thanks. THE SURVIVOR AND THE TRANSLATOR A solo theatre work about not having experienced the Holocaust, by a daughter of concentration camp survivors. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjih Before each performance I place these things: an old white ironframe bed; a backless and seatless rocking chair, also old and white,- a white Sabbath candle in a tarnished silver candlestick; a book of matches. The bed must stand at an angle twenty-five feet from the first row of seats, the rocking chair seven feet from the first row. But they must be connected. I hang a long white cotton string between them, across the distance, one end tied to the bed, the other to the rocker. I make up the bed in its fitted black-andwhite striped sheet and center at the head the small airline pillow in its white pillowcase. I drape the white taffeta dress with the broken zipper over the foot of the bed. The candle in the candlestick and the book of matches go on the floor nearby. Centered on the wall behind the bed hangs a large white screen. On the floor between the rocker and the first row of seats stands a very old film projector. On my head I wear an oversized set of black headphones with a long black coil-cord, long enough to stretch the whole length of the space. The end of the coil-cord plugs into a battered leather suitcase, is actually taped on to the side of the suitcase with torn pieces of black tape. I wear a white shirt and black pants and I am barefoot. As the spectators enter I sit on the battered leather suitcase near the foot of the bed and whisper just audibly parts of the text...