Wiesel Play Explores Sacrifice and Survival

Once Upon a Time, a little-known play by Elie Wiesel, will be staged for the first time in the United States at Boston University, thanks to the efforts of French doctoral student Guila Clara Kessous (GRS’07). The one-act play, which takes place in a Jewish ghetto in the midst of the Holocaust, will be performed at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, December 10, at the Tsai Performance Center.

“It’s the only play Professor Wiesel has set during the Shoah, or Holocaust,” Kessous says. “I feel really privileged and honored that he would give me the opportunity to direct it.”

Once Upon a Time is set in 1942 in a Jewish ghetto on the brink of destruction. A Nazi commander picks three Jews from a crowd and tells one of them to choose one of the other two men to die. If he refuses or kills himself, 30 other people will be executed. The drama explores issues of sacrifice, the limits of faith, and remembrance.

Kessous, a veteran stage actor and director, has been working with a large cast, which includes local middle schoolers, BU students, a rabbi, and Boston area actors, as well as a Holocaust survivor. “I really tried to have a big mix of people, all of us part of a big human adventure,” Kessous says. “You can feel, smell, the humanity during rehearsals.”

Andrew Benjamin (COM’09) plays the Nazi officer. “The prisoners’ inner strengths and faith are tested to degrees that are unimaginable,” he says. “The play truly speaks about the will to survive.”

Wiesel (Hon.’74), a Nobel Peace laureate and BU’s Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, has taught at the University since 1976. He has written more than 40 books and several dramatic works. Once Upon a Time, was written in French in 1968, but was never included in a collection of translated texts because, Kessous says, the publisher wasn’t sure “how to make it fit.”

Kessous came to BU from France five years ago in part to study with Wiesel, and has assisted in his classes. She was grappling with a theological issue for her doctoral dissertation when Wiesel handed her Once Upon a Time, which deals with some of the topics she was hoping to explore.

“I was so moved by the play that I translated it,” she says. “I showed it to him and he approved.”

Kessous directed another, better-known Wiesel drama on campus last spring called The Trial of God, which sees Jewish pogrom survivors in 1649 try God. Before that, she wrote and staged a one-act play called Culture.com, honoring actor John Malkovich. Kessous is pursuing a double doctorate in comparative French literature — through BU and the University of Metz in France.

“Nothing daunts Guila Kessous,” says Kessous’ dissertation director, T. Jefferson Kline, a professor of romance studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. “She’s of an energy that would terrify most people. She looks for challenges in life.”

Following Monday’s performance, a candle-lighting ceremony will take place to honor the victims of the Holocaust and to mark the seventh night of Hanukkah. Scheduled to participate are Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Rony Yedidia, the consul of Israel in Boston, Israel Arbeiter, the president of the American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors of Greater Boston, and veteran actor and Jewish activist Theodore Bikel.

“We as human beings have a connection,” Kessous says. “We need to remember to never forget that there are those of us who have suffered.”

Once Upon a Time begins at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, December 10, at the Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Ave. Tickets are $10 in advance and $15 at the door. For more information, visit the Tsai Web site.

Caleb Daniloff can be reached at cdanilof@bu.edu.