Best Theatre Experience Ever: Hana’s Suitcase

Last week I had one of the most profound live-theatre experiences of my life. I went to see Hana’s Suitcase, a play written about a girl named Hana who died in Auswitz. Geordie Productions mounted the month-long run in Montreal of a show that began in Toronto and has been touring the country. I saw it on its second-to-last day in town, and was blown away.

First, some background to the play itself. It is based on a book by the same name, which tells a true story. Students at a school in Japan get their hands on a Holocaust artifact - an empty suitcase with the name “Hana Brady” written on it. The students are stricken by this object…they suddenly want to know about Hana. And so, they begin to piece together the story of Hana’s life…who she was, and the impossible yet inevitable question, why she died.

The play self-reflexively pieces together the life of Hana Brady, as told through the eyes of these Japanese school-children and their teacher. As the students ask more questions, do more research, and learn more about her life, actors begin to tell the story of young Hana before and during the war (there was no “after” for Hana). It is as much a story about how to tell the story of the Holocaust, as it is about the tragedy itself. This question is implicit in all Holocaust art (and post-war art in general), but is explored so tenderly, so innocently, and so probingly in this play.

Stories about story-telling work perfectly for the stage. Common literary devices so typical of these kinds of stories - fragmented narratives, fluid characters, time lapses, returning memory, juxtaposing settings - devices which risk being alienating in a novel are instead rich, thrilling and deeply moving in a play.

But stories about explaining a story so horrific are just heart-breaking. I spent the entirety of the second act weeping…actually weeping (I’ve never cried like that in a play before…movies yes, but live-theatre no). And here’s what got me going: in the span of five minutes, we see the Japanese school-teacher struggle to protect her young students who are growing so upset at Hana’s horrifying fate, while at the same time committing herself to teaching them the truth. Meanwhile, as this Japanese classroom unfolds on the edge of the stage, centre-stage becomes the Pre-War Prague household of Hana Brady. Hana’s parents discuss the impending threats to Jews happening West of them, but Hana’s mother is certain to make sure her daughter does not overhear. This painfully innocent display of love - both the mother and the school-teacher’s instinct to protect their young - is so brilliantly captured by the actors, and taps so deeply into the human-side of tragedy.

The three Asian actors on stage throughout the whole story made an incredible statement. These “others” were taking on this Jewish tragedy. They were approaching it without appropriating it. They were grieving it out of empathy for this anonymous girl, yet were grieving it on behalf of all humanity. The central Japanese presence in the play makes a powerful (if not controversial) statement: the Holocaust is humanity’s tragedy. As someone who is Jewish myself, I have searched for ways to relate to the Holocaust, to mourn it without lingering in the grief of it. My family emigrated from Europe a generation before the War, so it’s never quite felt like my tragedy. Yet I have always felt that we must allow all of humanity to mourn it if we are to heal and to forgive.

I have heard stories of the Holocaust told in countless ways…through textbooks, lectures, exhibits, novels, films, cemeteries, anecdotes, conversations, and perhaps most heart-breaking of all, through silence - the stories not told, the traumas left buried. Yet none of these experiences moved me the way that this play did. I was astonished at how deep it hit. I was moved not by numbers or photographs or devastating piles of shoes. I was moved by gestures of parental love, of childrens’ struggles to understand evil, and of strangers reaching out each other. It was uplifting, cathartic, and inspiring, and I encourage anyone to see it when it comes to your town.