The production of Korzcak - the heartrending but uplifting true story of Janusz Korczak and the orphan children in his care living in the notorious Warsaw Ghetto and their demise in the Death Camp at Treblinka.

This evocative tale is retold as musical with haunting music and unforgettable melodies. This acclaimed and highly energised group of young actors present Korczak in the 60th anniversary year of the liberation of the death camps.

Korczak was produced in collaboration with Ojemba Productions

Preparation in Poland

Rehearsal Photographs

Production Photographs

Background

The musical, written in 1998, tells the stories of the children of the orphanage led by this man of international fame, who refused the countless offers of escape to the West, to stay with ‘his children’.  “You don’t desert a child when it is sick.”  It is a piece of musical theatre about kids growing up, making life choices, having fun, falling in love, and all set against the back-drop of the Holocaust.

In preparation for the production, we took 34 of the older members of the cast to Poland at Easter.  The object was to research the Holocaust, and visit Warsaw, the city of Janusz Korczak. We spent two days at Auschwitz, taking part in an extensive study programme looking at life and death within Auschwitz I as well as its sister camp – Auschitz-Birkenau, the site of the largest cemetery.We were lucky enough to meet Benjamin Smollen, the one of the very few prisoners to have survived internment throughout the whole life of the camp at Auschwitz, and now recognised internationally as the leading expert on the Holocaust.

It was then time to visit Krakow, the city of Oskar Schindler, where were able to visit the site of the Ghetto, and see some of the remains left behind, including a section of the wall. After Krakow, it was on to Warsaw, and the most emotional part of the trip.  The highlight of the week was unanimously the visit to Krochmala Steet and Dom Sierot, the original orphanage run by Janusz Korczak.  As the young cast entered the permanent exhibition to Korczak in the main Aula of the home, a blanket of silence enveloped them as they studied photographs, eye-witness accounts and documents relating to the great man, and the reality and enormity of the story they were telling, began to sink in.  That evening we were able to return to the Orphanage and throw a party for the children who live there today.

Having visited the Umschlagplatz, where the children were loaded onto the Death Trains, and where the cast were able to find the names of their characters engraved in the wall, we made the final pilgrimage to the site of Treblinka.  In the most beautiful setting, a clearing in a pine forest, nothing is left of the horror, save for the memorial made of some 17,000 rocks, symbolising the number of people the Nazis were able to kill each day.  Each one bears the name of a Jewish community or village or town, ‘evacuated’ by the Nazis.  Only one carries the name of a person, and that name is Janusz Korczak and the children.

The Writers

Nick Stimson - Nick is a playwright and theatre director. He is an Associate Director at the Theatre Royal, Plymouth and an Honorary Fellow of Exeter University.  He has also written and directed for radio and television. Among musicals written with the composer Chris Williams are: Brother Jacques, Wistman’s Drum, Stand Up Noah Small, Stay Tuned, Monkey, The Hot Rock, Starchild, Korczak, The Lost Domain and Unforgotten. Other plays include That Certain Night, The Seven Deadly Sins, Tristan and Isolde, The Last Dance, Union Street & Matthew Miller (the last two both with Nick Discombe), All Change (with Ian MacMillan and Howard Moody), NHS The Musical (with Jimmy Jewell), Borderline (radio), and for TV Sumo. Nick’s plays have been produced in Britain and abroad and he has won several major awards including, most recently, The Vivian Ellis Prize for the Best Musical for Young People (Starchild). He has also written three collections of poetry: In Magnet Air (Phoenix Press), Histories (Priapus Press) and Flying Pigs (Enitharmon).  He is currently writing the new full-scale version of Frankenstein for YMTUK and Who Ate All The Pies?, a musical about football, both with that talented young composer Jimmy Jewell. A devoted supporter of Crystal Palace FC, he is alos a passionate believer in miracles.

Chris Williams - Chris began his musical career at the age of eight as a chorister at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. Having won a scholarship to study Music at New College, Oxford, he went on to study postgraduate composition and piano at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he won several prestigious prizes, including the Royal Philharmonic Prize for composition. He is at present living in India where he has written and produced a musical play, “The Coolie’s Tale”, to celebrate the centenary of the Kalka-Shimla Railway. He has written and was Musical Director of an Indian version of “Stand Up, Noah Small!”, performed by children from 19 schools in Bangalore. He has just completed a commission, “Stage Songs”, for the Schools’ Prom in Royal Albert Hall. Meanwhile, he helped found The Young Company and The People’s Company for the Theatre Royal, Plymouth, UK, for whom he composed and directed many musical plays, of which “Brother Jacques”, “Monkey”, “StarChild” and ”Korczak” have won major awards. He has also been to Switzerland, The Czech Republic and Poland, working with young people to present musical plays and run workshops.

Youths to honour holocaust victims - Huntingdon & St. Ives Weekly News - 23 February 2005