by
JOHN LAZARUS
Playwright
One afternoon in
the 1950s, in our living
room in Montreal, I
found a book called “The
Wise Men of Helm and their Merry
Tales”, by Solomon Simon.
It was full of a kind of offbeat,
elliptical humour, in a style which
I had thought was my father’s
personal invention. The more I
read the stories, the more entranced
I became.
30 years later, in
Toronto, my friend
Peter Moss, Artistic
Director of Young People’s
Theatre, said, “I have some
commission money. What do you want
to write about?” My mouth
shouted “ Chelm!” before
my brain had quite got into gear.
Peter bought the concept instantly,
nodded, and said, “So do
it.” So I did.
I re-read
Solomon’s book and its sequel.
I also read the Chelm stories as
retold by other writers, particularly
the great Isaac Bashevis Singer – always
checking these retold stories against
anthologies of authentic folklore,
to make sure they were genuine,
and public domain.
Chelm is a real
city in Western Poland. A
century ago, it was
a shtetl, one of a
region of small Jewish villages
whose poverty and isolation
naturally bred some
naiveté, superstition,
and ignorance of the world. But
also, the Jews always placed great
value on widespread literacy. I
believe that the combination of
these forces resulted in an unusually
rich folklore, including a treasury
of stories about this one village
that somehow got a reputation as
the place where the fools lived.
Part of the fun of
writing this play was
finding different ways
to use the folk tales, interlocking
them in different ways: nesting
some within others, stitching
one
through the play as a running
gag, and so on. I did
add some original
material, about Yosef. Foolishness
is funnier when there’s a “straight
man” standing by observing
it, and it was fun to contribute
a new story. So the “spine” of
the play is Yosef’s journey
towards understanding the Chelmniks.
I also introduced
a pogrom. Though these
attacks were a grim
fact
of life, I could not find a
reference to them in
any of the Chelm stories.
But I figured it’s been a
hundred years and lot of history
since then, and it might be worth
the risk. To this day I don’t
know whether it was the right decision. |
|
But
then theatre is about
taking risks. And, as
Yosef and Miriam admit
at the end, enemy soldiers
never really hit themselves
on the head, forget their
names, and run from the
laughter of fools: they
only do these things
in stories. And if, like
Yosef, you love stories,
then, as Miriam tells
him, you’ve come
to the right village.
Production History
Village
of Idiots was
first performed
at Young People’s
Theatre, Toronto, in
1985. It has also been
produced by the American
Jewish Theatre, New York
City (1985), Western
Canada Theatre Company
(1985), Alberta Theatre
Projects (1986), the
Prairie Theatre Exchange
(1988), Studio 58 (1990),
the National Theatre
School (1991), Theatre
Kingston (2001), and
by various amateur and
school groups. It has
been translated into
Italian, and produced
as “Il Villagio
degli Sciocchi”,
in Venice, Italy, in
the spring of 2003.
Schmendrick’s
story was produced in
2000 as an animated cartoon
film for the National
Film Board of Canada,
under the title “Village
of Idiots”. An
expanded version of the
play, adapted for radio,
was produced by the CBC
in 2000 as a six-part
mini-series. Biography
John Lazarus is
a Canadian playwright.
He was born
in Montreal,
trained as an actor at
the National Theatre
School, and then
spent 30 years
in Vancouver, where
he
taught at Studio
58. Five years
ago he moved to Kingston,
to
teach at Queen’s
University. His most
recent play was Rough
Magic, at the Belfry
Theatre, Victoria. His
next play will be Meltdown,
in March, at Queen’s.
And if, like Yosef,
you love stories, then
as
Miriam tells
him, you’ve
come to the right village.
|
