If you have any interest in multiculturalism, multinationalism, or the interlocking nature of Eastern European cultures (Lithuanian, Polish, Catholic, Old Believer, Roma, Jewish) then you should really see the Sejny Chronicles.
The show, a little over an hour, is performed by a gorgeous and talented troupe of kids who sing, act, dance, play instruments, and bring a distant world, symbolized by the multicultural town of Sejny, back to life. Using songs and stories from all the mentioned cultures, the play is a memory project based on stories collected from their own families (and others) about life before WWII. The stories highlight how all these groups weren't isolated from each other, in fact, lives intertwined, all the time, no matter the languages or religions involved. It was only after WWII that this region hardened so tragically along nationalistic lines. It was only after WWII, for example, that Vilna/Vilnius became a majority Lithuanian speaking city.Before that the major languages had been Polish and Yiddish.
The content is interesting, of course, but the staging was also wonderful. The actors group around a clay model of Sejny. They occasionally pick up pieces of the town (a church, a house) and use that small gesture to bring us right into the topography of the town. I hadn't seen innovative theater like this in a while and I felt like a European theater festival had come to New York.
My only quarrel with the show was that the Yiddish content felt somewhat small. And when they did do a Yiddish song, it was Morris Rosenfeld's Mayn Rue Plats. At that point I turned to my date for the evening and we both arched an eyebrow. What was such a stereotypically American song doing in a show about Europe? There was even a volume Morris Rosenfeld's poetry on the table holding the model of the town.
Well, it's really my turn to eat my kapelush. Rosenfeld, while not from Sejny itself, was born in a neighboring town called Suwałki. And the more I thought about it, the more that Mayn Rue Plats made sense, at least from a certain point of view. The tune is gorgeous and when heard in the context of the Lithuanian and Polish songs, the similarity of mood and mode was undeniable.
So, The Senjy Chronicles is running for a few more days. Check it out while you can, and learn more about the amazing work being done by the Borderland Foundation. As I do my work on Jewish cultural reclamation, I am always moved by how this kind of reclamation is just as important for our former neighbors in Eastern Europe.
Rokhl, Rootless Cosmopolitan blog, 18 April 2008
The Sejny Chronicles
Sept. 30, 2011, 2:33 p.m.
Last night I attended a performance of The Sejny Chronicles at LaMaMa. The piece is a production of the Borderland Foundation. The Foundation
"was founded in 1990 by Krzysztof Czyzewski, Malgorzata Sporek-Czyzewska, Bozena and Wojciech Szroeder in Sejny, near the border with Lithuania and Belarus. Along with its Borderland Center of Arts, Cultures, and Nations, the Foundation is an NGO with a mission to research, revive, and nurture the cultural diversity of the Eastern borderlands of Poland that was nearly destroyed by two world wars. It promotes multi-cultural education and understanding locally, but also, more recently – in response to global threats arising from the rebirth of old ethnic and religious conflicts and a growing hostility to the “Other” – it serves as a model for cross-cultural dialogue in regions of ethnic tension worldwide."