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By Adam Causey, Contributing Writer
The International Cultural Center’s theater series resumed last week with the opening of its third production, “Dr. Korczak and the Children,” which is moving its audiences and its actors to tears.
“I believe it’s an extremely moving story,” said Ishita Sharma, a computer science sophomore. “The director has done an outstanding job.”
Alexander Tselebrovski, ICC program coordinator, is the director of the play by Erwin Sylvanus that retells a tragic Holocaust story.
Yanush Korczak, a Polish Jew pediatrician, ran an orphanage for Jewish and Polish children during WWII. When Nazis cleared his orphanage and sent his children to the gas chamber, Korczak refused to leave them, choosing to die with them instead.
“This play is quite a different thing altogether,” said Union Business Manager Dave Besse, who plays the role of Dr. Korczak. “It’s a serious play.”
The storyline is a play within a play. The five cast members wear a number of hats.
“Everybody has a big load to carry,” Besse said. “No one has a tremendous amount of experience, but everyone’s doing a great job.”
Also starring in the play are computer science senior Brandy Shaw, creative writing graduate student Plamen Arnaudov, David Randall and 11-year-old University Laboratory School student Evan Roider.
“In some scenes, you’re acting like the actor, and some scenes, you’re acting like the role,” Besse said. “That’s very challenging.”
The play’s range of emotions challenges the actors.
“It’s an emotional play,” he said. “The actors get emotional. You’re really feeling it.”
Besse said students should see this play because it is good for people who are forming ethical values.
“I think it’s a great moral lesson, especially today, when we see people in high positions playing fast and loose with the truth,” he said. “[Students] should strive for more than what they see in the papers today.”
In an earlier article, Tselebrovski said he hopes the play will bring up questions for contemporary audiences.
“On a wider scale, this deals with the responsibility of adults for our children,” Tselebrovski said. “Let’s do something about the suffering in the world or at least think about it. [The play] is about then and us now.”
“Dr. Korczak and the Children” is free and open to the public. The show’s final performance is at 7 p.m. at the ICC.