SIMPLE LESSONS ON LIFE
The Chinese version of a play based on incidents in ghettos during World War II is to be staged on the mainland toward the end of the year. Chen Nan speaks to the Israeli playwright about what moved him to tackle the subject.
When Israeli playwright and director Joshua Sobol first read diaries describing life in the ghetto of Vilna, in Lithuania, during the World War II, he realized that there had been a theater in the ghetto.
Then, in 1982, he started to do research on the subject. He found that many of the people involved were still alive. He felt the urge to adapt the story into a play.
The theater, which was established by Jews who were pushed into the small ghetto by German soldiers, used to stage various shows, including operas, dance and plays.
Sobol could not fulfill his idea of turning the stories into a play until he shared these stories with his students at the Beit Zvi School for the Performing Arts in Israel.
Speaking about how he was moved to write the play, he says: “When I read the diaries of people living in the ghetto, what surprised me most is that they wrote songs which are full of life and hope during the most difficult times.
“Almost every day, people were taken away and killed in the forest some 12 kilometers from the ghetto,” says Sobol.
“When I told them (my students) about the theater in the ghetto, they couldn’t believe it. We talked about it for two hours, which made me realize that the play was right there.” In 1984, the play, titled premiered at the Haifa Theatre in Israel, and the play has been staged in more than 25 countries, including the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom, and has been translated into 20 languages.
The play is scheduled to be staged in China in November, where it will be performed in Chinese for the first time.
Sobol will direct the play in Beijing working with Chinese actors.
His wife, Edna, the set and costume designer, who worked for six productions of the play, will do the set and costumes for the Chinese version.
Sobol recalls that he met a few survivors from the ghetto of Vilna and among them was a woman, who was only 17 when she first moved there.
“I asked what the theater meant to her and to her friends. And she told me that after very hard days of work — forced labor by the German soldiers — they put on their best clothes to go to the theater to meet friends. The theater reminded them that they were still human beings,” he says.
“There were 300 seats in the theater but they always sold more than that. When they celebrated the 100th performance, their records showed they had sold 35,000 tickets, which means the shows were overbooked.”
Since the play is about a theater, Sobol uses lots of songs and dance pieces in it, which are based on the 400 songs and notes he found in different ghettos, and whose styles include the tango and waltz.
When Sobol met another survivor, Abraham Sutzkever, who was a famous poet, Sutzkever told him that during his time in the ghetto, he was more prolific than at any time before or after, because the possibility of death was so strong and he did not want to waste any time. One of the songs Sobol uses in the play, titled In the Sky the Stars All Glisten, was written by the poet. He emphasizes that everything in the play is based on real events.
In the play, there is a man, named Kittel, a commander in charge of the ghetto.
One day, a group of women were taken away by the German soldiers to the nearby forest to be killed. They were asked to take their clothes off and stand still.
Before the shooting began, the soldiers were joking and drinking. It was a cold winter day. So, one of the women turned around and said to Kittel.
“Officer, if you don’t shoot us quickly, we will freeze to death,” the woman said.
“Are you cold?” Kittel asked. After the woman nodded, Kittel asked her to dress up and ordered the soldiers to kill the other women.
The woman was sent back to the ghetto alive.
“This story made me understand that the officer, who was only 22 years old, was the king of life and death. He could kill or spare a life for nothing. So, in a way, he behaves like a god,” says Sobol, adding that Kittel was also the one who offered the Jewish people an empty warehouse to use as a theater and asked them to put on shows to entertain him.
“You cannot believe that people under those circumstances could create this beautiful music. The function of art, or the theater in the ghetto, was as a means of spiritual resistance. You can take a life, but you cannot suppress its spirit,” the director says.
Sobol, who was born in Tel Mond, Israel, started his career in theater in 1971 and has directed more than 50 plays. His father’s family migrated from Poland in 1934 to escape from the Nazis.
Before Ghetto, Sobol had another award-winning play Village staged in China. That play was based on the story of a boy named Yossi, who lives in a small village and witnesses the fears, love, hopes and dreams of people against the backdrop of World War II.
The play was first staged at Beijing’s Capital Theater in 2015 after being invited by Beijing People’s Art Theater.
In November 2016, the play returned to China for a tour of four cities — Beijing, Wuhan, Guangzhou and Shanghai.
Speaking of the response in China to his work, Sobol says: “I love the attention of the Chinese audiences. For Ghetto, I don’t want to rush it. I will spend time with my Chinese partners, like actors, script translators and so on, to discuss the play before we actually put it on the stage.”
The play’s producer Wang Keran says that he was introduced to the script of Ghetto by French artist Anais Martane, who is Jewish.
“Then, after talking to Sobol, I realized that what I understood about the script was totally wrong. I thought it was about facing death, but later I realized that it’s about how to live,” says Wang.
The function of art... was as a means of spiritual resistance. You can take a life, but you cannot suppress its spirit.” Joshua Sobol, Israeli playwright