Harlequin In The Ghetto Play Analysis

Jabari Walters
28 April 2016
Theatre 2010
Rachel Aker
Harlequin in the Ghetto production response On Wednesday April 27, 2016 I saw the world premiere of Louisiana State University’s version of HITG. Honestly it may have been on the plays that I ever seen in my life, because the way that it was presented to the audience. The play was written by a young Jewish prisoner named Zdeněk Jelínek who lived in the Terezín ghetto which is also known as the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp. Before he passed away he gave the script of this play to one of his good friends who kept the script up until the 1970’s when script was given to a small theatre production company. Lisa Peschel re-discovered the play while doing research on the cultural life in the ghetto. Along with her colleague, LSU’s Associate Theatre Professor Alan Sikes they completed the play that was missing five pages and produce

Even though it was a black box play the design was crucial the only object that remained on stage was a wooden sign that said “You will find what you seek” There was a lot of movement going on within the play and at time the movement of the actors helped to visualize some of the things that actually happened in Terezín. For example there was a scene when three narrators were sitting on table each of them slightly higher than each other. This scene helped me visualize how prisoners were living in small cramped spaces. There was another scene where two of the actors were play hopscotch, and one of the actors fell. Afterwards falling to the ground a war officer helps the child up and walked away behind stage. That scene haunted me, I was worried for the safety of that child because, I knew from history class that the Nazi’s were capable of performing terrible acts to the Jewish prisoners. Overall this was a very well put together play. HITG taught me that history should never neglected and that it’s important to be educated on how far the world has