Dear Sir or Madam,
It is with great pleasure that I write to inform you about the unique
performance and American premiere of the play "Budzyn.” This first-ever
performance is being produced as a tribute to Holocaust victims
celebrating the World Day of Prayer 2010 at Harvard University.
At the conclusion of the performance, there will be a prayer ceremony to
celebrate unity and diversity in working for a world of peace and
justice, and to commemorate the recent tragedy for Poland with the loss
of the President Mr. Lech Kaczynski and government officials as well.
The Mayor of Cambridge, Mr. David P. Maher, Harvard University Associate
Provost for Arts and Culture, Mrs. Lori Gross, President of the New
England Holocaust Memorial, Mr. Rick Mann, Honorary Consul of the
Republic of Poland, Mr. Marek Lesniewski-Laas, Consul of Israel in
Boston, Mrs. Rony Yedidia will honor us with their participation.
The production will feature the Irving Fine Society Singers & Ensemble
performing music by Holocaust victim composer Edwin Geist, dances by
choreographer Cherina Eisenberg and special artistic collaboration of
famous actress Barbra Streisand.
This performance, which unites more than 40 people from 8 years old to
88 years old, working together on stage, will take place on Thursday,
May 6, 2010 at 8:00 P.M. at Sanders Theatre at Harvard University.
Please visit our website at
www.budzyntheplay.com
<http://www.budzyntheplay.com/>.
We would be extremely grateful if you could spread the word about this
meaningful event.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you need more information.
Sincerely,
Sasha Yakhkind
Public Relations Director
budzyntheplay(a)gmail.com
617-816-0131
...............................................................................
* “Budzyn”*
*based on a recollection by Henry S. Newmann*
*produced and directed by Guila Clara Kessous*
*adapted by vanda Gyuris*
*assistant directed by betty rosen*
* *
*A tribute to Holocaust victims*
*Celebrating the World Day of prayer 2010*
* *
*Thursday, May 6, 2010, 8:00 P.M.*
*Sanders Theatre at Harvard University*
*45, Quincy Street*
*Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138*
*Tickets: $12; students: $8*
*Ticket Reservations: 617-496-2222*
*
http://www.budzyntheplay.com
*Please send email inquiries to budzyntheplay(a)gmail.com
<mailto:budzyntheplay@gmail.com>*
* *
This first-ever performance is being produced as a tribute to Holocaust
victims
and to mark the World Day of Prayer 2010, celebrating unity in diversity and
working for a world of peace and justice. The production will feature
survivors, performers, musicians and dancers featuring music composer Edwin
Geist performed by The Irving Fine Society Singers & Ensemble.

“Budzyn” awakens our consciences to the question of theatrical
representation dealing with religious identity. The story takes place at the
Nazi controlled Budzyn labor camp in Poland, where the commander was
well known
for subjecting the prisoners to particularly cruel tortures and told as seen
through the eyes of one of its survivors, Henry S. Newman,

The commander, knowing that the young Mr. Newman had studied dramatic
arts in order to become a director, asks him to organize a small performance
with the prisoners in order to entertain him. The catch, however, was
that if
the Commander didn't laugh, he would humilate Henry in front of the other
prisoners before cutting his throat and assuring that he die in slow agony.

Visionary director Guila Clara Kessous uses all forms of art to
transmit
the testimony of this survivor while overcoming the simple reference to the
Shoah by attacking the crucial question of theatrical representation.
* *
SYNOPSIS
The voices begin on April 19, 1943. It is Passover in the Warsaw Ghetto
and the
Nazis occupy a young family. Only Henry and Benjamin remain together;
the rest
are lost, forced to exist only in memory. The two young brothers are
taken to
the Labor Camp Budzyn near Krasnik in Poland run by a cruel and vulgar
Kommandant Feix. We find out that Henry has studied to become a stage
director
at the university and is soon asked by Feix to direct a play for his own
enjoyment. The catch: Feix presents Henry with an ultimatum; either create a
play that humors him and live, or fail to capture the commander’s
attention and
perish. Henry struggles with limited resources and time to cultivate a
play from
scratch. The night before the play is supposed to premier for the camp
twelve
prisoners are hung and it is up to Henry to save those still alive. Can he
succeed? Will he live on, or will he fall victim to the war’s atrocities and
become a memory?
NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR:
What intrigues me in this testimony is the fantastic use of theater as a
communication tool. This commander, who has full power over his
prisoners, who
has the right to keep them alive or dead and who takes full advantage of his
position savagely to satisfy his drive for violence by playing all sorts of
sadistic games, is somehow aware of his own inhumanity. He lacks
opportunities
to laugh as well as the power of distraction because he is “bored”. I am
fascinated by the idea that this commander, who spends his time
imagining new
refinements in the way he is going to condemn to death his next victim,
could
feel bored. In one way, through his request to Henry, he is trying to regain
access to what he has lost and what he knows the prisoners keep: a piece of
humanity. The ability to laugh, to forget the exterminator and
exterminated, is
only accessible through the experience of staging. Once again, it is
thanks to
the dramatic arts that Henry is able to survive, as he writes, “To hear
people
laugh in this unholy place was the greatest gratification anyone could ask
for.”
If there is one thing I have restrained myself from doing since I began
working
with the theme of the Shoah, it is to speak for the survivors. My work is to
engage with the survivor’s testimony and attempt to use theater to reconcile
historical truth with artistic impression. My work is first of all a work of
transmission and not of appropriation or even of creation. Creativity is
only
good if it adds to the veracity of the testimony. After the work that I have
done with Elie Wiesel and the numerous discussions I was able to have
with the
concentration camps’ survivors, I sensed an emotional paradox. It is a
kind of
lassitude mixed with a profound desire to go forward in fixing the
Shoah’s place
in societal and historical consciousness once and for all. Rosian Zerner, a
Shoah survivor and former vice president of the World Federation of Jewish
Child Survivors of the Holocaust, confided to me that "We no longer want to
lock ourselves up in a past history. We want to live, contribute to the
society, enjoy the company of our children and our grandchildren,
telling them
what happened, commemorating the Shoah but not wallowing in the pain of
memory.
Our experience has to reach beyond the Jewish community in order to
enable us to
touch as many people as possible." I wished to open this theatrical event on
this theme in order to reach a wider audience and escape the idea of an
episode
of a Jewish story lived by Jews and performed for a Jewish public. By
performing this play during the World Day of Prayer, my goal is to reach
beyond
the idea of community to present the idea of universality. The prayer
that will
end this performance isn’t addressed to a divine power but to ourselves, as
responsible humans with a duty to be responsible towards one another….
- Guila Clara Kessous, PhD
Producer & Director
Download press packet at
www.budzyntheplay.com under the Press Section
--
Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
Harvard University
1730 Cambridge Street, 3rd Floor, Suite 301
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617.495.4037
Fax: 617.495.8319
http://www.daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu