Before I started writing, I wanted to become an actor. While rehearsing for one of the few plays that I actually managed to act in (Iphigeneia at Aulis), I met a young man named Redbad. I was sixteen at the time and living in the Netherlands.
Redbad’s mother was from Poland, and after finishing high school he decided to move to Poland. He became an actor and then a director, and as these things go, we lost track of each other.
A year ago, I got a letter from Redbad in which he invited me to write a play for the international theater festival that takes place every two years in the Polish city of Wroclaw. He added, “Of course, we need an excuse to see each other again, so the only condition is that you will spend a month in Wroclaw.” I’m always tempted to accept such original invitations.
And here am I in Wroclaw.
The director of the festival, a remarkable woman in her early seventies, informed me that it would be highly appreciated if somehow the city of Wroclaw and its history would have a place in my play.
That’s not too difficult.
Before 1945 Wroclaw was named Breslau. It was a German city.
After 1945, the city became Polish. The remaining Germans were moved to the west and from the city of Lwow, the Polish people were moved to Breslau.
One of the first things that I did here was going to a play called Transfer.
The actors were not professional actors. Half of the group was from Lwow. They now live in Wroclaw, and the other half are Germans who used to live in Breslau.
There are a few questions to be asked about the play, and the last of them was not whether it was wise to portray common men and women as victims of the powerful.
But the play did raise the important question: what is home? I myself was forced to answer this question a few times after I arrived here.
I used to answer that question rather flippantly. “My suitcase.” Or, “My hotel room.” Forced to give a more serious answer, I came to the conclusion, with hesitations, that I considered New York my home.
One of the people I met in Wroclaw asked me, “Would you mind being deported to another city?” “Oh yes,” I said. “Very much so. Even if it’s to Miami Beach.” “So then,” he said, “you know what home is.”