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September 15, 2000/15 Elul 5760, Vol. 52, No.53
Writer explores alternate history in new play
BARRY COHEN
Community Editor
More than 55 years after the end of World War II, and notwithstanding the production of countless histories, novels, magazine articles, newspaper stories and films, the Holocaust still teaches lessons.
With his play "The Madagascar Plan," Brian Borowka creates an alternate Holocaust reality, a history that almost was.
A master's degree student in Arizona State University's fine-arts/playwriting graduate program, Borowka used as his inspiration Nazi Germany's plan to relocate 4 million European Jews to Madagascar, a French-controlled island off the southeast coast of Africa. Of note is that a Polish commission determined in 1937 that Madagascar was too small to accommodate even 60,000 people.
According to a July 3, 1940, memorandum, "The Jewish Question in the Peace Treaty," the French would hand over the colony to Germany, and the 25,000 Europeans living there would be removed, to be replaced by Jews forced to leave Europe.
Toward that end, efforts had begun in November 1938 by Herman Goring and by Hjalmar Schacht, Reichsbank president, to move Jews to Madagascar. The plan became unfeasible, however, as the Battle of Britain continued to rage and Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. The lack of manpower and resources to transfer millions of Jews from Europe to southeastern Africa, set the stage for the "final solution" - the Germans' mass slaughter of European Jewry.
Borowka says he read about the Madagascar Plan years ago, "in a history book, probably 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.' " As he learned about the attempt to resettle all of European Jewry on the island, he was intrigued by "what direction it could have led."
A challenge, according to Borowka, was writing yet another play on the Holocaust.
"There are so many plays on the Holocaust," he says. "It has been dealt with from every which direction." Before a writer chooses to create a Holocaust play, he needs to have "something new and different to say about it."
With "The Madagascar Plan," Borowka's master's thesis project, his goal is to make the audience "think it is going in a standard direction, and then it shifts into an alternate reality."
In the play's first scene, the audience is introduced to a Jewish family in Belgium in the summer of 1940, before Germany conquered France.
In the second scene, three German officers present the Madagascar Plan.
"Then the family gets the letter saying they are being shipped to Africa," says Borowka.
He views the Jewish aspect of the play as a premise; his ultimate goal is to indict the tribal attitude of the play's characters.
"There is a danger in taking too much pride in who you are," says Borowka.
He explains, "The Madagascar Plan" is about more "than just the evil Nazis. Everyone is feeling superior to someone else," the French toward the indigenous Malagasy, the Jews toward the Malagasy, the Malagasy tribes toward one another and the Germans toward everyone else.
"I love what it's about. It is a really unusual take on history," said Joseph Megel, guest director. He says the play explores what happens when indigenous and displaced people meet, "when people are completely tribal ... for survival or arrogance. Borowka shows how status shifts and how ironic relationships are built."
Megel, artistic director at Playwright's Theater of New Jersey, came to Arizona three years ago. Following the performances of "The Madagascar Plan," he will return to the theater, located in Madison, N.J.
One unique aspect of Borowka's piece is its "workshop approach"; it is crafted in part through feedback during each performance from the director, writer, actors and audience.
Borowka explains Megel's Playwright's Theater is one of the pioneers of the technique.
The workshop approach commonly helps young playwrights get to the next level, he adds.
"There is re-editing at each performance," says Borowka, so that each is slightly different. Sometimes the actors have scripts in hand, sometimes not.
"I have not done this format before," Borowka says.
"I felt as if Brian still had not finished it (when I read it the first time)," says Megel. "But it merited focus and energizing on what he wanted it to be about."
Megel says the workshop approach helps the writer get a better play and helps the participants "affect how a piece gets born and have an impact on how it grows."
Borowka is from Oceanside, Long Island, N.Y., "a town one-third Jewish."
"I had a strong sense of Jewishness growing up," he says, mentioning Conservative Hebrew school classes and regular Sabbath service attendance.
Borowka says much of his work concerns Jewish themes, namely "modern American Jewish questions of identity." He expresses these themes usually with a comic point of view.
He calls "The Madagascar Plan his "first epic, historical effort."
Borowka, who attended Oberlin College, says he has always felt connected to plays and to theater. He started acting when he was 8 years old, in plays including "Peter Pan" and "Oliver."
"I had a knack for the way people talk and the rhythm of language," he says.
"The Madagascar Plan," a two-act play with an 11-member cast, runs Sept. 15-24, in the Lyceum Theatre, 901 S. Forest Mall on the Arizona State University campus.
Show times are 7:30 p.m. except for 2 p.m. matinees on Sept. 17 and 24. The Sept. 24 show will be signed for the hearing-impaired.
Tickets are available from the Katherine K. Herberger College of Fine Arts Box Office, 480-965-6447, at $14 for general admission; $12 for seniors, faculty and staff; $10 for students.
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