An intergenerational research and performance project bringing the archive to life with a century-old cautionary play written by an immigrant teenage girl living in the Lower East Side tenements in 1921.

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SAVE THE DATE FOR THE RESTAGING ON THE HENRY STREET PLAYHOUSE STAGE- AUG. 8

 

In 1921, Rachel Meirowitch, a 16-year-old immigrant living in the tenements of New York's Lower East Side wrote a short play, Happenings in Poland, depicting a tragic day in the life of an alternate self in Poland, who witnesses Polish soldiers murder her entire family. The story takes place in the tenuous moment between the World Wars, between two now nearly vanished spaces – the tenements of New York and the Jewish towns and communities of Poland.

 

At the play's end, the curtain rises, the characters (played by teens) stand together, raise their hands out to the audience and say in unison, "help." This was 18 years before the onset of World War II and the Holocaust. A chilling cautionary tale.

 

The young playwright was my grandmother. She often spoke of a play she wrote and presented at the Henry Street Settlement Playhouse as part of the youth group, and that activities with this group saved her life. She never mentioned the subject of the play or talked about her life in Poland. Long after she died, I found the play written out by hand in her adolescent diary. I sat with it for a long time, wondering what to do with it, and then I brought it to the Henry Street Settlement's Abrons Art Center, the present-day steward of the playhouse.

 

Between the fall of 2024 and the Summer of 2025, I am working with the teens and the director of Abrons Art Center's Urban Youth Theater (UYT) to explore what it means to restage my grandmother's play now in the very same location, over a century later. The members of UYT are a group of teen actors from the local neighborhood and across New York City, alongside their tireless Teaching Director, Jonathan Dingel-El, who has developed a rapport with these teens over years. Together, we are recreating my grandmother's original play plus a devised response created by the Urban Youth Theater, both to be presented on the playhouse stage in August of 2025. Video, audio, and photographic documentation of this process will culminate in a multi-media performance lecture/ live documentary that follows the research, exploration, and development of this complicated story in the contemporary moment.

 

Some of the questions we are asking as we revisit my grandmother's script: If the play had been written today, who would be the characters, and to whom would they be making their plea? How do the experiences of the characters in the play connect with our daily lives? Performed by American teens with limited prior knowledge of the details of what life was for Polish Jews in the decades before the Holocaust, this project aims to be a safe space for questioning and dialogue around the relationship between this fraught history and its relationship to current political events.

 

This project includes archival research into the Henry Street Settlement to create an institutional portrait of this place that provided a life raft for the immigrant community living in New Yorks tenements, and continues to deliver on its legacy. Shedding light on the cultural activities during the late teens/ early twenties that provided the conditions for my grandmother's play, it focuses on youth activities and the use of art and theater to empower young, underserved communities, and on founder Lillian Wald's impact on the immigrant community as a feminist and human rights activist. It parallels these historical activities with their contemporary equivalent, the passionate culture and social workers working at Abrons/Henry Street providing crucial programs for the local community today.

 

Combining research, theater workshops, and documentary, this multifaceted project is made possible with support from Abrons Art Center, Asylum Arts, The New York State Council on the Arts, and the Puffin Foundation. It is a fiscally sponsored project of New York Foundation for the Arts.