mjcca news - The Jewish Georgian

Page 18 THE JEWISH GEORGIAN September-October 2012
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Georgia College students take play
about Holocaust hero to Czech Republic
Zack Bradford as Jan Wiener and Jordan Hale as a British fighter pilot
teaching Jan Wiener to fly
Georgia College actors pushed artistic
boundaries this summer in an inspiring performance
about Czech Republic hero and
Holocaust survivor Jan Wiener (1920-
2010). The play, The Flights of Jan Wiener,
was written by Karen Berman and Paul
Accettura; they were inspired by Rabbi
Neil Sandler, of Ahavath Achim
Synagogue, when he talked about Wiener
during 2011 High Holiday services.
Nine theatre students traveled nearly
5,000 miles to celebrate the legacy of
Wiener, during the annual European
Regional Theatre Festival, Central
Europe’s largest international festival.
“We’re the only academic student
group that performs annually at the festival,”
said Dr. Berman, chair of the Georgia
College Theatre Department. “This festival
attracts more than 200 performances, which
include plays, concerts, exhibitions, and
workshops.”
During the festival, the student actors
gave four stage performances of The
Flights of Jan Wiener in the Czech
Republic capital, Prague, and the town of
Hradec Králové. Hundreds saw the play,
including Wiener’s widow, Zuzana Wiener.
“Zuzana attended the play and ran
onstage to hug our actors after the third curtain
call,” Berman said. “During lunch with
us at a restaurant dedicated to her husband’s
life, she told us about her work as a dance
teacher and film instructor, urging our students
to ‘follow your heart, and you will
always be happy.’”
The Flights of Jan Wiener explores
political issues surrounding the legacy of
Wiener, who escaped Nazi occupation and
fought for the United Kingdom’s Royal Air
Force (RAF) during World War II.
Georgia College senior theatre major
Amy Carpenter played Wiener’s stepmother,
Eva Wiener.
“The play took on a new meaning
when we met Zuzana,” said Carpenter.
“When she gave us firsthand accounts of
the events we portrayed on stage, suddenly
everything we did and said had more
weight. My biggest challenge was getting
the emotions correct for the suicide scene.
It was a hard place, but I trusted my fellow
actors and myself.”
The play also stretched the student
actors physically. Students used their bodies
to create a British bomber plane and a
barbed wire fence.
“At one point I was upside down for
several minutes to create the back of a
plane,” Carpenter said. “It was really hard.
I had to teach myself to live in a place
where I could find peace, since my body
was so uncomfortable.”
Born into a Czech-German Jewish
family in Hamburg, Germany, in 1920,
Wiener fled Hitler’s Germany with his family
to Prague, Czechoslovakia, only to find
himself on the run again after the Nazis
overran Czechoslovakia. Between 1941
and 1942 his father committed suicide and
his mother died in a concentration camp.
Wiener escaped through Italy to join
the RAF. He served as a radio navigator
throughout the war. When the war ended in
1945, he returned to Czechoslovakia.
In 1948, communists took over and
imprisoned Wiener for five years as an
enemy of the state. Wiener emigrated to the
United States in 1964 and became a professor
of history at American University, in
Washington, D.C.
After 1989, Wiener frequented Prague
and eventually moved back for good,
becoming a lecturer at Charles University
and New York University’s campus in
Prague.
After Berman and Accettura wrote the
play, the Georgia College Theatre
Department co-produced it with professional
theatre company Washington Women in
Theatre, of which Berman is a member.
“The play provides an understanding
of Jan Wiener’s contributions as a Czech
hero, U.S. citizen, and American professor,”
Berman said. “He brought Czech culture
to the United States, and we brought
his legacy back to his home to share with
the Czech Republic.”