Students look fascism in the face

A recent production of “The Wave” at Tel Aviv’s Alliance High School raised questions about fascism and coexistence for the audience of Israeli high school students.

Roey Stern, 17, who had studied the Holocaust and read “The Wave” to prepare for his history matriculation exam, said he felt the play was relevant to his life in the midst of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Today all these riots are more religious,” he said. “It’s the Jews versus the Muslims and if the conflict escalates even a bit more, it could become much worse. The play’s message is something we can learn from.”

This stage version of “The Wave” was performed by the American Drama Group Europe, with actors from New York, London and Paris who perform classic and modern dramas around the world.

Fascism and coexistence are focal points of “The Wave,” based on a true story about a teacher’s experiment teaching the perils of fascism to his students and then an entire school in 1967, in Palo Alto, California.

The book was originally written by Todd Strasser and later adapted for the stage by Paul Stebbings, Phil Smith and Christian Flint.

Judy Kleinman, the group’s producer in Israel, said she wanted to show “The Wave” to mixed audiences of Arab and Jewish students in order to force the coexistence issue, given the subject matter of the play.

The Haifa, Nazareth Illit, Rehovot and Achva College shows all had mixed audiences of Arab and Jewish students. That was intentional, said Kleinman.

“Our performances were phenomenal partly because some audiences included Christians, Muslims and Jews,” said Kleinman. “It fulfilled our goal of bringing high school students together in a neutral venue.”

Last year Kleinman brought British theater troupe TNT Britain’s production of Romeo and Juliet to Israel, in order to expose kids to Shakespeare.

One of the final performances of “The Wave” was at Tel Aviv’s elite Alliance High School, where the 11th and 12th graders were noisy and preoccupied.

That’s one of the side effects of performing at a school rather than in a theater, said Kleinman. It’s more like an assembly than a theater experience, she said.

They were also very familiar with the story.

Most Israeli high school students read “The Wave” to prepare for school trips taken to Poland in eleventh or twelfth grade. They are generally more familiar than most kids their age with anything concerning the Holocaust, said Kleinman.

Jean-Paul Pfluger, who plays educator Ben Ross, said he believed the most crucial element of the performances of “The Wave” was that it created dialogue in areas of conflict, and even if the show doesn’t influence every audience member, it was still successful.