Review: MAZEL at Theatre Artists Studio
The production completed its run at Theatre Artists Studio on April 26th but its impact remains.
Theatre Artists Studio's production of Amy Hartman's MAZEL has ended its run, but its themes of remembering, reconciliation, and forgiveness echo beyond the stage. Under Kathleen Butler's direction, the play, which was conceived in 2006, arrives in reworked form at a moment when its central question is no longer merely theatrical, but urgently real: what happens when the last witnesses to history are no longer here to tell it?
For decades, Holocaust education has relied not only on scholarship and archival records, but on the living presence of survivors whose testimony carries an authority no document can replicate. However, that era is rapidly closing. According to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, there are approximately 196,600 Jewish Holocaust survivors living across more than 90 countries, with a median age of 87. The window for firsthand accounts is narrowing at an unmistakable pace, requiring that succeeding generations assume the responsibility of transmitting these histories.
Hartman's play fits neatly into this demand for "remembering," for reminding us of the possibility of history repeating itself if no one heeds the lessons of the past.
MAZEL draws directly from the life of Holocaust survivor Jack Sittsamer, a Polish-born Jew who survived multiple concentration camps before being liberated in 1945 at the age of nineteen. After immigrating to Pittsburgh, he built a new life and, like many survivors, sealed off his past in order to build a future. Only after his retirement did he begin speaking publicly about his experiences, addressing students and community groups with a sense of urgency that time was running short. That arc, from silence to testimony, is the dramatic engine of MAZEL.
We encounter Jack in his later years, newly compelled to share his story. Into his home has come Martin, a nineteen-year-old German student, with whom Jack will be making educational presentations about the Holocaust. This arrangement has enraged his daughter Pearl on two counts. As a child, she was denied access to the defining truth of her father's life; as an adult, she watches him offer it freely to a stranger…and not just any stranger, but a young German who, in her eyes, carries the guilt of his ancestry. For Jack, however, engagement with the next generation is essential and inseparable from the moral imperative to testify. He becomes the embodiment of forgiveness.
But there is something else nagging at Jack: a piece of unfinished business that requires his return to Poland, the home of his origins. When Pearl unexpectedly reconciles herself to her father's plans – moved, it seems, by a grudging recognition of what his silence cost them both – they join in a journey loaded with emotion, recalling a past long obliterated.
Hartman intensifies the drama with a device that interweaves Jack's present-day life with the testimonies of four survivors. The play moves fluidly between two temporal planes, such that the past coexists with the present. This structure is embodied by four figures (Leigh Armor, Judy Lebeau, Mark Gluckman, and Tom Noga), who function as a kind of modern Greek chorus. Like the choruses of early drama, they step in and out of the action, interrupting the central narrative to bear witness to the traumas of the Holocaust. Their presence does more than provide commentary; they contextualize the conflict between Jack and Pearl and transform the stage into a collective reckoning.
The play's title assumes a meaning that transcends its general definition as luck or fate. In a revelatory and touching denouement, MAZEL equates with the fate of a singular life whose humanity transcended the fires of the camps.
Kathleen Butler's direction meets the demands of this play with admirable precision. There is no attempt to over-direct the material or impose sentiment where the text already carries weight. Instead, Butler allows stillness, silence, and carefully calibrated shifts in voice to do the work. The result is a production of great emotional weight.
That weight is sustained by a uniformly strong ensemble. As Jack, Steve Mastroieni delivers a commanding performance of considerable intensity. His struggle to reconcile the conflicts in his life is palpable. Debra Rich grounds Pearl's anger in something deeply recognizable, but it is in her embrace of her father's turmoil that her performance reaches its most resonant and genuine depths. Owen Donsker is a marvel as Martin, affecting an authentic German accent and delivering a performance laced with innocence. Dave Schramm's austere set underscores the somber atmosphere, a space where memory can surface without theatrical clutter.
What distinguishes this production, however, is not simply its technical or performative competence, but its grasp of the play's broader stakes. As educators and historians have increasingly emphasized, the Holocaust can no longer be taught primarily through firsthand testimony. Its lessons about resistance, resilience, and the moral obligation to confront hatred must now be carried forward by those who inherit these stories rather than those who lived them.
There is a tension at the core of this imperative. How do we reconcile the act of remembering with the act of forgiving? And harder still: how does a people resist being defined by the very horrors inflicted upon them and choose instead to be defined by the values, resilience, and collective purpose that carry them forward?
Hartman lands these questions with an invitation to the audience to contemplate their answers. She doesn't sentimentalize survival, nor does she simplify forgiveness. She ultimately asserts that these stories matter and demands that we carry them forward with the complexity, honesty, and moral seriousness they deserve.
Theatre Artists Studio -- https://www.thestudiophx.org/ -- 12406 N. Paradise Village Parkway E, Scottsdale, AZ -- 602-765-0120
Graphic credit to TAS
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