The Ceremony

Set at a commemorative ceremony in a small Polish town, where during WWII a massacre was perpetrated by neighbours upon neighbours, The Ceremony offers a dark but urgently relevant dramatization of the terrible violence of ethnic and religious conflict.

Sunday 21 May, 7.00pm

Written by Eva Hoffman | Directed by Braham Murray

The reading will be followed by a panel discussion.

Set at a commemorative ceremony in a small Polish town, where during WWII a massacre was perpetrated by neighbours upon neighbours.

The Ceremony powerfully dramatizes a dark, but urgently relevant subject:  The terrible violence of ethic and religious conflict, the tensions and latent prejudices which lead to its unleashing, its long aftermath in the memories and lives of subsequent generations - and the possibilities of stopping it in time.  Using documentary speeches, haunting encounters with figures of lost ancestors and, crucially, the disturbing and rarely heard voice of the Perpetrator, the play alludes to events in the past, even as it confronts us with violence unfolding in another part of the world, right now. Particularly relevant at a time of rising communal conflict and renewed Holocaust denial, this is a play which engages the audience directly in its characters' passions, and which culminates in a movingly cathartic ceremony of mourning and reconciliation.

Eva Hoffman grew up in Cracow, Poland, before emigrating in her teens to Canada and then the United States. She has worked as senior editor and literary critic at The New York Times and has written and presented numerous programmes for BBC Radio, as well as lecturing internationally on subjects of exile,  Polish-Jewish history, cross-cultural relations and other contemporary issues. Her books include Lost in Translation, After Such Knowledge and Exit Into History, and two novels, The Secret, and Illuminations. She is currently Visiting Professor at UCL.