“Our Class” is an original play debuting at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) from January 12th through February 4th. Directed by Igor Golyak, the play is inspired by true events related to a pogrom in 1941 in the village of Jedwabne in German-occupied Poland. The story follows ten classmates and friends, five of whom are Catholic and five who are Jewish. The friends end up betraying each other, resulting in real-life, permanent consequences that haunt them for decades to come.
Beauty News NYC contacted the director of “Our Class,” Igor Golyak, to learn about his life, his upcoming play, and his hopes for this poignant art piece to serve as a timely reminder of the horrors of antisemitism and of the worst of our history repeating itself.
What inspired “Our Class?” How did real-life events, such as the 1941 pogrom in Jedwabne, influence your creative process?
My grandmother’s family was massacred at Baba Yar in 1941, the same year that the central event of “Our Class,” the Jedwabne pogrom, took place. My family left Ukraine as Jewish refugees when I was ten years old. We gave up our passports at the border. I arrived in Boston with no English, and my family had to rebuild new lives here in the US. Antisemitism has always been, and continues to be, a live current running through the generations of my family, through my own life experience in America, and through my community. The process of making “Our Class” has been both a personal and collective excavation of how and why this kind of hatred continues to live within people, how it gets activated, and how we can and will turn on our neighbors and classmates in the future.
As part of my preparation for “Our Class,” I visited Poland with some of my collaborators- we visited Jedwabne, visited Auschwitz, walked the Jewish quarter of Krakow, journeyed to small towns and museums, and spoke with people there. I read constantly, studying history and current world events in Ukraine, Israel, and here in the US. History is repeating itself right before our eyes at this moment – with terrible wars and a rise in antisemitism across the world undertaken by ordinary people who are recognizable- they are just like us. All of these things have informed my production of “Our Class,” a contemporary story about all of us as human beings, what we are capable of, and how we try to live with the consequences.
How did you approach casting for “Our Class?”
I have the most incredible cast. Some of them I’ve worked with before, and others are new collaborators. Casting took us about nine months, and we cast one character at a time and built the ensemble over time organically. They are Ukrainian, Russian, American, some Jewish, others with Polish roots- a truly international group. We held a retreat in the Berkshire mountains a month before rehearsals started, which was a chance to dig into the play, talk, spend time together, and steep ourselves in the project before officially starting. That was awesome. Our rehearsals are extremely collaborative- we play, we improvise, we experiment. Designers are often in the room contributing ideas and working with the cast. It’s a very creative space, and the whole cast is there most of the time. We are creating something powerful together, and they are a dream to work with.
How is emerging technology integrated into your artistry, and how does it contribute to the storytelling in “Our Class?”
During the pandemic, I founded the (zero-G) Virtual Theater Lab as part of my theater company, Arlekin Players, outside of Boston. We flipped our black box theater into a green screen studio and began experimenting with live, interactive online productions and also the creative use of cameras, projections, and effects in live performances. I’m interested in how technology can help explode ideas and themes in a play and can provide actors and audiences with new experiences and interactions that serve the artistic project we are doing. There are amazing tech tools that are being used by the gaming, film, and broadcasting industries but are not widely used in the theater, and a big passion of mine is figuring out how to integrate them smoothly into theater practices and workflows and inventing with them to make great theater, both online and in person. Partners like BirdDog, Netgear, Sound Devices, Gotham Sound, Telos Alliance, Aximmetry, Dolby- all of these companies are collaborating with us to make new things happen in the theater. I guess to find out how we are using them in “Our Class,” you should just see the play…
How do you see “Our Class” addressing contemporary issues?
I want people to try to understand each other and themselves. “Our Class” asks questions like, “What would I do in this situation?” I hope it opens some dialogue about who we are, who we can become, and how to live meaningfully in the face of terrible times that have happened in the past, are happening now, and will happen again.
What role do you see theatre playing in fostering empathy and understanding in the face of hatred?
Good theater connects people viscerally, and audiences can feel, recognize, and even understand someone else on a human level. This, at least for a moment, creates illumination and empathy. That’s an opening. That’s an opportunity.
See “Our Class” at BAM from January 12th to February 4th. Buy tickets HERE.
