On-Site Program: Selections from Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s “Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski” & Panel Discussion

Performing Memory and Witness: The Lesson of Jan Karski

“What can we do?” asks Jan Karski, the Polish emissary who risked his life to bring news of the Holocaust to the Allied governments. This is the question at the heart of Derek Goldman and Clark Young’s play Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski starring Academy Award-nominee David Strathairn, and it is the question that haunts this moment in our history.

Join us with Chicago Shakespeare Theater for a live performance of selections from Remember This as the backdrop for a panel discussion about how theatrical performance can serve as a powerful call to action. With Remember This as a focal point, panelists will reflect on how performance of memory and testimony can bring light to overlooked or forgotten histories, and how remembering creates new ways forward.

Panelists will include David Strathairn, award-winning actor and star of Remember This; Derek Goldman, the play’s co-author and director, and founding director of Georgetown University’s Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics; Clark Young, the play’s co-author; and Devika Ranjan, a Chicago-based theater-maker, ethnographer, and educator. The discussion will be moderated by Della Pollock, Professor Emerita at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The program will end with an opportunity to purchase a signed copy of a special volume of Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski that includes the published play and essays from leading diplomats, artists and thinkers including Madeleine Albright, Samantha Power, and Azar Nafisi, among others.

Chicago Shakespeare Theater presents Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski in a two-week limited engagement, November 3-14, 2021. More information on the production at www.chicagoshakes.com/rememberthis.

Community Partners: Polish American Congress Illinois Division; Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Chicago; The Polish Museum of America

Registration required

Free to the public