Translator:
Darja Dominkuš

Director:
Nina Rajić Kranjac

Co-production:
Mini teater
Prešernovo gledališče Kranj
Mestno gledališče Ptuj

The honorary patron of the performance is the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland in Slovenia, Excellency, Mr Paweł Czerwiński.

Premiere:
2nd September 2018

First Slovene staging

About the performance

Our Class is a story about a group of classmates form a small multicultural Polish town where Polish and Jewish children lived in unity until first the German Nazi occupation and then the Soviet occupation. Fourteen scenes show us the tragic fates of ten pupils from a completely ordinary school class – from their first loves and friends to the infinite cruelty caused by antisemitism and Nazism.

Author of this virtuously written play follows the fates of ten children in an almost documentarist way. He follows them from 1925 until today (for some) to show, through the complicated intertwinement of their fates and the horrific consequences of the Nazi and the Stalinist ideological indoctrination that both caused a complete separation and hatred among the people. At the same time, the play also uncovers the problem of the collective guilt and its consequences that still mark and define people today.

The story is based on a true event that happened in Poland during World War II, but we could recognise similar events anywhere including Slovenia where the ghosts of the past still haunt us and our history is far from being resolved.

Based on a real event which occurred in Poland during the Second World War when, in the small Polish town of Jedwabne, according to some references 300 and according to others 1,600 Jews were cruelly killed. The long-concealed truth about the event - that the slaughter was actually perpetrated by their fellow Polish townspeople and not by the Nazis - came out only a few years ago. After the war, in fact, this horrifying slaughter was of course kept secret, and the survivors - the perpetrators and the victims alike - had to continue to coexist, with all their personal wounds, guilt and revenge.

The author of this virtuosically written play almost documentarily follows the fate of ten pupils of a perfectly ordinary school class. Through an elaborate intertwinement of destinies, he wants to show the horrendous consequences of both the Stalinist and Nazi ideological indoctrination that caused a complete schism and hatred among people, burdening them with collective guilt and its consequences which determine and mark them still today. Or as Wladek, one of the survivors of this immensely sad and at the same time instructive story, puts it: "I have always believed that truth would triumph in the end."