Oscar Nominee David Strathairn Stars in TFANA's Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski Beginning September 10

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Off-Broadway News Oscar Nominee David Strathairn Stars in TFANA's Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski Beginning September 10

Clark Young and Derek Goldman's show about the Polish WWII hero makes its New York premiere Off-Broadway.

By Leah Putnam

September 10, 2022

David Strathairn in *Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski* Photo Courtesy Polonsky Shakespeare Center

Clark Young and Derek Goldman's Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski begins its New York premiere at Off-Broadway's Polonsky Shakespeare Center September 10. Theatre for a New Audience presents the solo performance, starring Oscar nominee David Strathairn, in a run through October 9.

Strathairn (Nomadland, Nightmare Alley) makes his TFANA debut as Jan Karski, a Polish resistance fighter, World War II hero, and Holocaust witness who volunteered to walk from the Warsaw ghetto and a Nazi concentration camp in occupied Poland before bringing news of the horrors to British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and the Allied Nations in London as well as President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the United States. His reports, however, were received with skepticism and denial.

TFANA Founding Artistic Director Jeffrey Horowitz said in a statement, “Theatre for a New Audience is a modern classical theatre whose cornerstone is Shakespeare. What is this play doing in a season at TFANA? The answer lies in the question ‘what is a classic?’ To me, it’s a story that is never over. It keeps getting retold because the issues that the classic plays are addressing are never over. Every generation has to deal with them.”

Goldman directs Remember This, which he developed at The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University. Karski earned his doctorate and taught at Georgetown for four decades following the war, and Goldman worked with Clark Young on crafting a script almost entirely from Karski's words, informed by Karski's former students and colleagues. Remember This premiered in 2019 at Georgetown, and then played runs in London, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.

The creative team features scenic designer Misha Kachman, lighting designer Zach Blane, composer and sound designer Roc Lee, costume designer Ivania Stack, and movement director Emma Jaster.

For tickets and more information, visit TFANA.org.