Puente Theatre Presents Wordplay 2014: Way to Heaven

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Sunday, March 2nd, 2014
8:00 PM

Wordplay is a festival of staged readings from around the world.

Way to Heaven by: Juan Mayorga, Translated by David Johnston
Directed by: Mercedes B�tiz-Ben�t

Way to Heaven (Himmelweg, Camino del Cielo) (Spain)

Way to Heaven explores the terrible phenomenon of Jewish complicity in covering up the reality of the Holocaust. It is based on the compulsory acting that played out in the �model camp� of Theresienstadt, located near Prague. The play is a historical amalgam; combining aspects of the infamous show camp and the famous July 1944 Red Cross visit to inspect the camp, as well as its subsequent approval by the Red Cross. This awesome �dress rehearsal� is played out in the shadow of the Nazi death machine, which is evoked by the trains arriving promptly at 6 a.m. every morning, and the ever-present ramp leading to the death chambers and crematorium. As the play makes relentlessly clear, the fa�ade of normalcy � children playing, a balloon seller, a mid-day meal and the petty drama of young lovers � all serve to mask the grim reality of what was really a transit labor camp on the way to Auschwitz. Starvation and disease was the norm at Theresienstadt even though the Nazis lauded the camp as the safe haven for the Jewish cultural elite of Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria. Indeed there was an amazing amount of art, music and theater produced by the inmates, before they were shipped East to their deaths. Hence the tragic irony played out in Way to Heaven.

In German, it�s �Himmelweg�. In English, it�s �Way to heaven�. Such beautiful expressions in either language. Yet they mask a deadly reality � cynical euphemisms for the ramp that leads Jewish concentration camp inmates to their deaths. They are linguistic disguises, just as performance becomes a disguise in Way to Heaven to conceal the horrors of concentration camp life from a Red Cross Representative. Rather than gas chambers and cruel guards, the Representative sees nothing unusual, as the Jewish inmates are forced to perform �normality� for their visitor. Duped by what he sees, the Representative goes away satisfied that the rumours of inhumane Nazi death camps are untrue.

Yet how much power does a performance have to deceive? Was the Representative really duped or was he happy to believe in the superficial pretence of reality in front of him? When faced with the bombastic and intimidating theatrics used by governments today to conceal atrocities, are we - unlike the Representative - prepared to speak out?