Absence as Presence: Our Journey to Poland
...and some scattered thoughts
I buttoned up emotionally for our research trip to Poland. We went to meet playwright Tadeusz Słobodzianek and to explore the real locations where the events of “Our Class” took place. Jedwabne, Auschwitz, and other sites where history’s darkness lives. I was preparing our production and knew I needed to see these places, to feel them. I braced myself for the wave of grief, for something overwhelming to hit me.
...and nothing.
It ultimately did hit, but not how I expected.
A Jew, a Pole, and a German walking into Poland. Sounds like a bad joke, right? But there we were: me, playwright Tadeusz, and Jan Pappelbaum from Berlin’s Schaubühne and our scenographer, searching for the ghosts of history.
In Lublin, Tadeusz stopped us on a hill. “This was the capital of Jewish life before the war,” he said. “90% Jewish. A Jewish university here.” He pointed down: “There it is.”
I looked. A parking lot. Nothing else.
Not a plaque, not a memorial. Just absence. And this absence crushed me more than any monument could have.
This is where they lived. Ten classmates, half Polish Catholic, half Jewish, in a small town called Jedwabne. They played soccer together. They studied together. Some fell in love. All the ordinary activities of childhood. And then one day, half of them burned the other half alive.
Antisemitism is a light sleeper. It dozes beneath the surface until difficult events happen, then it wakes, stretches, and rises. One day people play soccer together; the next day, one half burns the other half. These aren’t mystical Nazis from far away. They’re neighbors, classmates, friends.
We sometimes forget that evil can live beside us. That evil is not something that exists over the ocean, far away in a land with crazy people. It exists next to us. It can exist in the mundane, and it can erupt any moment. This kind of hate does not have geography, does not follow geographical rules, and can swim over the ocean very easily.
In America, we’re accustomed to stories about evil Nazis committing atrocities. We compartmentalize: bad people do bad things. But this play reveals something different. These perpetrators are ordinary people just like us. That’s what makes it so vital. The play challenges us to question our certainties about good and evil, pushing us toward empathy rather than judgment.
Reading journals from pogrom survivors, I found something mind-boggling: many wouldn’t leave their towns even after attacks. When asked why, one woman simply said: “We thought it couldn’t get worse.”
I don’t believe in teaching lessons of the past. If they worked, we wouldn’t be in today’s world. This play isn’t about what happened. It’s about what will happen with people like us. That’s why our actors appear in contemporary clothes, why they move fluidly between portraying children and adults.
In “Our Class,” we constantly erase and rewrite our chalk wall, just like history itself. The Russians come in, then the Germans, then the Russians again. Three symbols drawn and erased at the top of our blackboard. Chalk is erased, just like the truths in their lives, in our lives, are sometimes erased. The truth of being extra safe in America is slowly being erased right now.
Tragedy lives in the mundane. It can happen at Starbucks. It’s not separated from us by an ocean. It’s us, it’s people, it’s me.
We’re bringing “Our Class” to San Francisco this spring. This isn’t just another play we’re staging. It’s something that has been living inside me for six, seven years now, waiting for this moment. And now, with everything happening around us, its urgency has only intensified.
Most of us aren’t masochists. We don’t seek out terrible experiences. But awful things happen in life, and we often respond with humor or lightness as a way to survive. The saddest events are sometimes told through jokes because vulnerability is so difficult. There’s profound humanity in this response. All the characters in “Our Class” want happiness, and they pursue it even amid darkness.
In the first twenty minutes, we sing Tumbalalaika with the audience. Everyone gets involved. Everyone is happy together. We ruin the idea that this is a holocaust play. It’s just people enjoying each other. And then it becomes something else. That is life. That’s something that can happen. With journalism, it’s a review of events or facts. With this, it’s a way towards the heart.
In rehearsal, we’ve created what I call a “Zero Gravity Laboratory.” A space where conventional boundaries dissolve. We employ chalk drawings, movement, and music by Oscar-winner Anna Drubich to create a world where beauty and horror coexist. We find moments of unexpected laughter because that’s what humans do. We search for light even in the darkest places.
Our extraordinary ensemble brings together actors from Ukraine, Russia, Boston, and New York. Something that transcends borders. Chulpan Khamatova will be joining us. She’s an international superstar, one of Russia’s greatest actresses who left after the war began. She’ll play Rachelka/Marianna, and in her words, she wants to “speak loudly about what happens to people when they are overwhelmed by hatred and war.”
Having two children, Jacob and Esther, I constantly question how they will live in this world. How do we continue to coexist?
What moved me most about the New York and Boston runs of this production, was watching audiences afterward. They didn’t rush to leave; they sat silently, needing time to process. Though the ending contains lightness and hope, something profound had shifted within them. At BAM, ushers struggled to clear the theater after each performance. When audiences finally left, they gathered outside. Some smoking, some talking, some silent. Something had happened inside that space that demanded reflection.
I don’t know exactly what each person experienced, but I recognized that the play had touched something essential. It wasn’t just a story about people who lived decades ago. It had become something immediate and personal. That’s the theater I believe in.
You know, I never thought I’d become a “Jewish director.” In theater school, there was always this sentiment about not becoming a “type” of director, and I actually agree with it. You don’t want to box yourself in. Exploring different worlds informs your outlook in the most unexpected ways.
So when someone first asked if I was a Jewish director, my Pavlov’s dog response was negative. Like, no, I’m just a director who happens to be Jewish. But given where we are now, given what’s happening in the world, given the last three plays I produced: yes, I am a Jewish director. And I’m okay with it. For now, this is where I need to be.
“Our Class“ runs March 27-April 5 at the ZSpace in San Francisco with international star Chulpan Khamatova. Tickets @ Zspace website.
“A visionary theater maker never thought he’d be ‘Jewish director’ — then the times demanded it,“ The Foward
How did you find the courage to create the deeper reality of theatre from these experiences? I know a woman from Poland, now in Minn Mn currently protesting against ICE, whose father packed his family into his donkey cart when she was 10 and escaped to the US after too many rounds of both Soviets and Nazis, one after the other, each one stealing the livestock from their farm... one time her mother, who was small and rape-able, hid inside an oven, hoping the marauders would not use the kitchen for their feast. Survivors still in America. So many of the Minnesotans now standing up to ICE have roots in the slaughters you describe.