Arlekin Players ‘Witness’ (virtual)
by Julie-Anne Whitney
‘Witness’– Written by Nana Grinstein with Igor Golyak and Blair Cadden; conceived and directed by Igor Golyak; scenography and costume design by Anna Fedorova; virtual design by Daniel Cormino; sound design by Victor Semenov; editing by Anton Nikolaev; cinematography by Austin de Besche; dramaturgy by Blair Cadden; stage managed by Kendyl Trott. This world premiere production runs at the (zero-G) Virtual Theater Lab through January 23, 2022.
“Where do unwanted people go?” This is the question that Arlekin Players Theater is asking us to consider in their new virtual documentary theater piece, Witness.
Set on a ship that travels through time, Witness explores the seemingly endless migratory experiences of Jewish people throughout history. The source material for the script comes from historical letters, journals, and newspaper articles as well as recent interviews with immigrants and refugees from around the world. The story, written by Nana Grinstein, is inspired by the 1939 transatlantic voyage of the M.S. St. Louis. With over 900 Jewish refugees on board, the St. Louis was cruelly turned away from ports in Cuba, Canada, and the U.S., and ultimately forced to return to Europe. Of the more than 500 passengers who became trapped in Nazi-controlled countries, 254 of them were killed in concentration camps.
In true Arlekin Players style, Witness was created by a global collaboration of artists from nearly half a dozen countries. Told in multiple languages, it’s a wildly creative, interactive experience that blends live and pre-recorded performances by a company of 33 actors. Separated into three distinctly different acts, this production is part history lesson, part radio play, part virtual dream.
Act One begins when the Emcee, played with great enthusiasm by Gene Ravvin, invites us to board the St. Louis and join the audience of the “Jews on the Move” talent show where we vote for our favorite act of the night. But don’t be fooled: these “talents” are more subversive than entertaining. A man builds a tower of cards while telling a story about a Jewish family that can “build [a] house anywhere.” A woman teaches us how to boil banned books in order to remove the “dangerous” ink from their pages. A magician makes himself disappear after telling a story about a starving, wounded boy who won’t accept help from a Jew.
With no visuals to guide us, Act Two is an entirely auditory experience crafted by Victor Semenov’s beautifully layered, provocative sound design. It is deeply moving and easily the most impactful sequence in an online adventure that doesn’t always find its emotional target. We, like the hundreds of refugees aboard the ship, are instructed to “stay in our cabins and put our headphones on” while we wait to hear whether or not we’ll be allowed to disembark in Havana. There’s an aggressive knock on the door, we catch part of an anxious conversation, we flinch at the sound of a crying child, we hear a splash after a passenger jumps overboard. We’re alarmed by newspaper headlines that shout “Return the refugees to Germany!” We learn that only 18 passengers are given landing permits in Cuba and the rest of us must stay on board.
Act Three feels almost hallucinatory when Ravvin (the Emcee) finds himself unable to leave the virtual world of Witness. As he wanders up and down the ship’s corridors he stumbles upon living snapshots of Jewish life in America– scenes from weddings, parties, living rooms, and dining rooms. When he asks these strangers how to get off the ship, no one seems to understand what he’s talking about. “I’m not a passenger on this ship!” he protests, trying to convince someone (perhaps himself?) that he doesn’t “belong here.” Listening to two young Jewish thespians, played with realistic ease by Lauren Elias and Nathan Malin, despair about the growing antisemitism in Boston, Ravvin looks at them and asks, “But it’s different in America, right? It was supposed to be different [here].” We soon realize that Ravvin– like all Jewish people – can never get off the ship. They have no safe harbor, no permanent place to call home. They are forever shifting, floating from one transient existence to another– unified only by the fact that no one seems to want them around.
Witness isn’t the sort of production you come to see for the acting, writing, or design (though the skill and scope of Daniel Cormino’s digital world is impressive). You come for the story. You come to listen to these brave, resilient people who have struggled for too long– people who need us to believe them when they say that antisemitism is still prevalent in the world. You come to witness their experience. For more information and tickets, go to: https://www.arlekinplayers.com/
