Polish, Portland stage collaborate on Bruno Schulz work

By PAUL HAIST

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Portland’s Hand2Mouth Theatre in collaboration with Poland’s Teatr Stacja Szamocin and Portland klezmer musician Jack Falk this month and next will present the North American premiere of “From a Dream to a Dream,” an adaptation of the writing of Bruno Schulz.

The script is based chiefly on Schulz’s 1937 novel “Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass.”

The novel is a collection of dreamlike, poetic short stories that focus on the death of the narrator’s father and on life in the Jewish quarter of Drohobycz, the town where Schulz was born.

The theatrical adaptation, which will open with a preview May 29 at Artists Repertory Theatre here, was created by director Luba Zarembinska of Teatr Stacja Szamocin (Theatre Station Szamocin). Szamocin is a municipality in central northwest Poland.

Schulz, the son of assimilated Jewish parents, was a Polish schoolteacher, writer, literary critic and graphic artist who today is considered among the greatest Polish writers of the 20th century.

After the German invasion of Poland in World War II, Schulz was forced to live in the ghetto of Drohobycz. He was shot on the street there by a German officer in 1943 while living under the protection of a Gestapo officer who admired his drawings.

Hand2Mouth Artistic Director Jonathan Walters said H2MT and Teatr Stacj have collaborated since 2003 on bilingual pieces that have toured Poland.

Teatr Stacj’s Zarembinska has been to Oregon in the past.
Walters said she was here in 2006 as a guest director at Willamette University where she directed another of her works in English for the first time. At that time she also worked with Tears of Joy Puppet Theater.

It was then, according to Walters, the Zarembinska began rehearsing the upcoming piece with Hand2Mouth Theatre and working with Falk.

Falk, who was traveling in Europe as this article was being prepared, drew upon his expertise in Jewish and Eastern European music to create a score for the production, according to Walters.

Falk has created “a landscape of music that is true to Polish culture in the 1930s,” said Walters. “Jack researched what kind of music Bruno Schulz would have heard and been influenced by at that time.”

Falk, well known in Portland as the longtime host of the Yiddish Hour on KBOO radio, has incorporated old recordings that he has blended with his own music, according to Walters, to create a soundscape that is a dominant force in the production. “The show is submerged in sound,” said Walters.

Where Falk brought his love of music to the work, director Zarembinska brought her interest in puppet theater, although with a twist in the Schulz work that may be unusual here.

Zarembinska, who has studied puppet theater in Poland, incorporates mask work in “From a Dream to a Dream,” according to Walters.

“Objects come to life,” he said, explaining it as a Polish style of puppetry in which the masks come to life.

Six actors perform in the productions—two Poles, four Americans.

Hand2Mouth’s Web site says the production includes “meditations on eroticism and death,” and explores “In-between time, when we are neither awake nor asleep.”

Walters said the theme of the work is the loss of innocence.

After a pay-what-you-can preview at 8 p.m. on May 29, “From a Dream to a Dream” plays Thursdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. through June 8.

Tickets at the door are $12 to $18. Only cash or checks are accepted at the door, no cards.

Opening night, Friday, May 30, will include a party at the theater. Tickets for that performance are $25.

Tickets may be ordered on line at a small premium for delivery other than will-call. Go to Hand2MouthTheatre.org. Click on “Now Playing” and then “Buy Tickets Here.”

For group tickets or more information send e-mail to mail@hand2mouththeatre.org or telephone 503-235-5284.

Artists Repertory Theatre is located at 1515 SW Morrison St.