By Talia Isaacs
Editor’s Note: This article contains brief mention and description of sexual assault.
“Our Class,” a new play which has already been nominated for several awards, takes place in Poland during the rise of communism, the Nazi regime and of course, the outbreak of WWII. The play is based on true events, and follows the lives of ten classmates – some Jewish, some not – as they come of age in the tumultuous world of political upheaval, antisemitism and war. Ultimately, most of the Jewish characters end up dying in a pogrom, many at the hands of their very own former classmates. The play highlights Jewish European culture, including live Yiddish music, and painfully portrays the tragic loss of Jewish life. Through the art of theater, the actors tell a story we know all too well, a story of Jews who were slaughtered at the hands of their friends and neighbors.
As part of the Stern Honors Program, students in the cohort are required to attend a certain number of events per year. There are a variety of events to choose from, with certain ones being mandatory for first time on campus (FTOC) students. One of these events was the off-broadway play “Our Class,” which was a required event for FTOC honors students, and optional for other honors students.
While these stories are important for us to see and hear, and it is initially understandable why the honors department had students see the play, there were certain artistic licenses taken by the playwright and actors that were, in my opinion, distasteful. The playbill did have a short, vague warning, alerting the audience that the play contained adult material, such as acts of violence, sexual assault, smoking and more. But this warning could not have prepared any of us for the gruesome, gut-wrenching, live rape scene that the actors performed on stage, not even 20 feet away from us.
I was the first girl to walk out. The second the lights went on for intermission, I knew I couldn’t stay any longer. I’d considered leaving in the middle of the play, even in the middle of the scene, but the theater was so small and the exits were in the center of the room, so I didn’t feel comfortable walking out then. The rape scene seemed to last for hours, dragging on and on; the screams of that poor skinny actress echoing in the theater. I do not consider myself a person who gets easily triggered, so I cannot even imagine what watching that must have been like for the more sheltered students in the crowd. I myself am a pre-Law student, hoping to do criminal prosecution of sex crimes, and even I felt I could not handle watching these two actors mime-rape that poor actress for ten whole minutes. I have worked with survivors, and read page after page of dockets detailing explicit, graphic sexual assault, but nothing has shaken me the way this play did.
As I rushed out of the theater, not even bothering to ask permission if I could leave, I began to question, “what are we willing to do for the sake of ‘art’?” Should we let coworkers defile each other in front of an audience, all in the name of “authenticity?” Can we tell the same story by simply alluding to the assault, or would that not have the same impact? Does it even matter? These are the questions I grappled with as I took the subway back to Brookdale alone in the dark, because that is how desperate I was to get out of that theater.
Later that night, I heard that Dr. Wachtell, the head of the honors program, went around the theater telling the honors students they could leave the play early. Apparently she didn’t know about the rape scene, otherwise the honors program wouldn’t have attended the play in the first place.
I wondered if cutting out the rape scene from the play would qualify as some sort of censorship of our history. I think about how privileged we are to be able to walk out of a theater because watching our own history unfold before our eyes is too traumatic for us, when meanwhile our ancestors had to live through it. They could not just walk out of the theater. This was their life, this was their story. Should we be forced to sit through and watch it, since they had to live it? Should I subject myself to the trauma of witnessing two men pretend to forcibly penetrate a young girl while she screams and begs for them to stop, because that is “authentically” what happened? I don’t know.
In the end, I decided that having such a graphic rape scene was unnecessary, and that while it may have had an impact, there is no impact worth the collective trauma that was sustained from that night.
I thought of survivors especially, and how attending that play might have triggered them and undone months of healing and hard work, causing all the pain to resurface. My mind goes back to that actress, the girl who played the rape victim; I think about how she has to get on stage every night and let her coworkers – some of them men twice her age and size – pretend to assault her for an audience of people. She has to go out for drinks with them after the show, take pictures with them and run lines with them at rehearsal.
I decided that there are some things we do not have to do “in the name of authenticity.” Art should be authentic, and at times it should disturb us, but perhaps it should never be so authentic, or so disturbing that we can’t stand to look at it. I hope in the future there will be better research done about the events the honors program takes us to. I think we can all effectively mourn and appreciate our history as Jews without watching two strangers pretend to violate a woman on stage, all the while narrating how much they enjoyed it.
Photo Captions: YU Students hold “Our Class” playbills in the theater at the SCW Honors Event
Photo Credit: Naomi Rose