We saw His “Replika” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1976, and himself, and excerpts from his work on Dante, at La Mama that year. When we visited years later Warshaw, we made it as an important part of that visit to see his Teatr Studio, in that Stalinist Wedding-Cake of a building in the “Palace of Culture.”

Also, reading his obituary, we understand a little better his background. He was born in Rzeszow, a place we visited to see the ruins of what was once a tremendous Rabbinic Court. Though not Jewish, Szaina, with a name that might have shown Jewish influence, knew because of his youth experiences about the terrible loss, not only to Jewry, but to Poland itself. After the war he studied theater in Krakow - the main city of what was once Western Galizzia. A place full of memories from what was once a flourishing Jewish culture center. Though Nazis destroyed the Synagogues and killed the people, they did not touch the tomb of the Remuh - Rabbi Moshe Iserless - that survived thus, and is still to be seen with the 400 year old tree that sprouted from under the tombstone. Even the Catholics in town regard the place as holly - so no-one, not even the Nazis, dared to destroy that part of the cemetery that was the center of the Jewish part of town.

Five Catholic Priests, Professors at the Jagelonian University, established a Hebraic studies department in this city that had no Jews left. It was for the locals to study Hebrew in order to try to revive some of the past glory. When I visited there for a three week stay with a group of students from NYU, one of the professors gave me a new book that was a compilation of the archives of the old Krakow headquarter of the local Bnei Brith organization. I delivered the material to the Washington DC headquarters. It is these Professors that helped create a row of Jewish style restaurant in that Kazimiresz part of town - on the Street where there are the remains of the Remuh. The local Poles played there Jewish Klezmer music. I was one evening astonished seeing Elie Wiesel “Kibitzing” a game of chess in one of these restaurants - the one called Ariel.

The theater revival had also to do with an attempt at revival of the Jewish culture. Krakow has thus what was seen as a strong innovative streak of theater. Very dark in its content but quite lively and spirited in the way it is staged. It was this sort of theater, some based in Krakow and some in Warshaw, that brought into existence the modern theater of the seventies. Grotowski, Kantor, Sjaina were very different pillars of this phenomenon.

The obituary also mentions the town of Nowa Hutta, and Sjaina’s Teatr Ludowy. We were there, and what was even more interesting, at a festival in Krakow, I remember a performing visit from that place. Another theater was Crikot.

So, please read the obituary, and be inspired that from all that darkness sprouted unbelievable art. This was the pain that had to find an outlet - and if you like it or not - that was real theater and real self sacrificing performance.
People like Ellen Stewart and Richard Schechner can still testify to the spirit of these people that were active in the 60s and 70s, and left their influence on the modern stage. As it is extremely well described in the obituary - theater is not about words but about acting. Szaina knew to bring out that pain with nearly no words altogether - and he communicated that pain directly to our hearts. Surely, later on others wrote and staged pieces with more wording, but the Grotowsky method has become part of theater education. In our review of the “Persians” at Sienna college in Albany, New York, I was aware that Dr. Mahmood Karimi Hakak, an Iranian, had studied with Richard Schechner, and thus introduced some of the elements of stage design that originated with this sort of theater.

Further, as the UN deals now with the question of what is Genocide, and we just had an event at the UN on the topic on June 26th, with the UnderSecretary-General Kiyotaka Akasaka making the opening introduction, it should indeed be considered as educational imperative the viewing of the filmed performance of Szajna’s Replika, as he suggested himself.