Signs of Life

The project went well, though personally I prefer longer ones as there is only so much you can do to improve people's English in a couple of weeks.  But I cannot deny I'm exhausted after rising at 5:00 AM to plan lessons, teaching six hours each  day, and going out almost every evening.

The night before last, we went to see Signs of Life, a play about inmates of a Nazi concentration camp who preserve a sense of order and personal meaning. during their imprisonment. Ceasing to believe in God in the face of unimaginable cruelty, the characters use art as a form of transcendence. The play is thus a work of Secular Humanism, an approach to life grossly misunderstood by the religious community. The setting is Terezin, also known as Theresienstadt, a Nazi concentration camp about 40 miles from Prague.  .

Signs of Life ran off Broadway in the US; this performance was sponsored by the International Psychoanalytic Society, whose annual meeting was held this year in Prague.  The cast was transported here from New York and toured Terezin, so this must have been a very expensive proposition.  But the cost of attendance here was modest-- I suspect the play was intended to educate the public here in Prague.  In all, a class act.

After the play, there was a "Talk Back" session moderated by Stefano Bolognini, President elect of the International Psychoanalytic Society.  She made a fascinating connection between the Nazi's secrecy about their objectives and lies we tell ourselves about goals and our personal past.