Even after months of preparing for his play’s opening night, Boston University professor Leslie Epstein said the message of King of the Jews is that it does not have a message.
“No serious work does,” the BU graduate creative writing program director said in an email. “But [King of the Jews] does examine how human beings respond to being put in an inhuman situation.”
His 1979 book-turned-play, which began preview shows last night at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and will officially premiere Saturday, tells the story of the Judenrat, a group of Jewish officials forced by German Nazis to set up their own governments and decide which Jews would live and die in Polish ghettos during the Holocaust. It has been translated into 11 languages.
“All serious writers must somehow deal with the Holocaust,” he said in an email. “Being a Jew has made [my] confrontation with the Holocaust most formal and direct.”
The play, which will run until March 10, features local actors and will be performed on a round stage, allowing audience members to see the stage from the front and the back of the theater, said stage managing director Jake Strautmann.
“It’s been phenomenal seeing the show transform from a long four-hour reading in June to a really stellar thing,” he said. “[Epstein has] been there for every rehearsal . . . and that says a lot.”
Strautmann, who also teaches an undergraduate BU creative writing course and assists with BU graduate courses, said “ticket sales are through the roof” — the upcoming Saturday night performance is already sold out.
The play’s local actors bring a positive energy to the theater, Strautmann said.
Creative writing department administrative coordinator Matt Yost, who has worked with Epstein for more than two years and known him for nearly 10, said Epstein is a “very hands-off boss.”
Yost, who helped with the play’s publicity, said it was interesting to see Epstein’s book transform into a play because the original version was much longer in length, with 20 additional pages and an extra character.
“We’re trying to get a lot of students to come out to [see] it,” Yost said.
Born in Los Angeles, Epstein, whose son Theo Epstein is the Boston Red Sox general manager, began his career as a playwright with a Master’s in theater arts from the University of California-Los Angeles and a doctorate of fine arts in playwriting from the Yale Drama School. After being a Rhodes Scholar, receiving the Fulbright and Guggenheim Fellows and writing several fictional works, Epstein decided to return to the stage with King of the Jews.
As a writer, Epstein said his greatest strength is that he is “unafraid to use [his] own voice,” a technique he uses in teaching students how to find their own voices.
“[My greatest accomplishment is] maintaining the highest critical standards undeviatingly over a very long period of time, a period that antedates my arrival [at the creative writing program],” he said.