Istituto Italiano Di Cultura presents the North American premiere of From Treblinka to Auschwitz: Vasily Grossman And Primo Levi: a dialogue between witnesses, a theatrical reading with live music for Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 29, 2019, 6:30 pm at Toronto’s Alliance Française (free admission).
Martin Julien is a specialist in spoken word in concert with musical ensembles, for ten years premier spoken word artist for the Toronto masque theatre, an instructor of acting, theories of acting, acting through song, theatre history, and modern play study, author in respected journals, and senior editor of Theatre Passe Muraille: A Collective History, published by Playwrights Canada Press in January 2019.
JAMES STRECKER: Please tell us about a project that you have been working on. Why does it matter to you and why should it matter to us?
MARTIN JULIEN: At the moment, I am preparing to participate in a project that matters to us all. This is not a hyperbolic statement. On the occasion of the Holocaust Remembrance Day 2019, the Istituto Italiano di Cultura will be presenting “From Treblinka to Auschwitz: a dialogue between witnesses”, a theatrical reading of extracts from “Auschwitz Testimonies” by Primo Levi and “The Hell of Treblinka”, by the Russian writer and journalist Vasily Grossman. Actor Michael Miranda will be reading from Levi, and I from Grossman. Superb musicians Robbie Grunwald and Drew Jurecka will be providing live accompaniment. The event is on Tuesday, January 29 at 6:30, in the Spadina Theatre, and admission is free.
These eyewitness accounts by Grossman (1944) and Levi (1947) are two of the first to be written and published about the Holocaust – the murder of almost six million Jews by the Nazi regime in Germany. Our remembrance of the worst mass murder in human history needs to include these firsthand and unsparing testimonies. After all the analyses and moral reckonings are done (and these are processes never to be finished) the recorded details of individual experience continue to be our clearest path to recognizing the collective horror of this event in history.
JS: How did doing this project change you as a person and as a creator?
MJ: The horrors of the Holocaust are almost unspeakable. Words cannot but fail to faithfully represent the experience of those who were there. And yet, here are these words. Unsparing, clear, sparse, unflinching. The challenge of giving them voice, so that more of us may hear the immediacy of their truth, is perhaps the most vital and serious I have undertaken in a long career encompassing the spoken word.
JS: What might others not understand or appreciate about the work you produce or do?
MJ: Primarily, though not exclusively by any means, my career in theatre and media has been as an actor. I’m not a well-known name outside of some small circles – certainly nothing approaching a “star” – but rather that entity known as a “working actor”. I think that many people who do not work in the performing arts industry don’t get that actors are always working. The most typical question actors encounter is probably: “Have you been in anything I’ve seen?” (Followed by: “How do you learn all those lines?” Answer: the hard, repetitive work of mastery, as in anything worth doing.) The truth is, we may well have been in “something you’ve seen”, but you probably didn’t see us. Most actors’ work is supporting and ensemble work. Against popular stereotype, actors are usually team-players who do not draw unnecessary attention to themselves but work to support the project and the company.
Even when not working actively on stage or on set, actors are forever preparing for auditions, honing skills, and clearing time for potential employment. Most of the actor’s work is invisible.
JS: What are the most important parts of yourself that you put into your work?
MJ: Potentially – and, perhaps, idealistically – I put all of myself into the work. This is the unique demand of, and opportunity for, the actor: you – body, mind, heart – are both the instrument and the one playing it.
JS: What are your biggest challenges as a creative person?
MJ: Continually committing to the unknown. To what cannot be known until it is risked, experienced, and assessed.
And, also, making a living as what the media call a “creative”.
JS: Imagine that you are meeting two or three people, living or dead, whom you admire because of their work in your form of artistic expression. What would you say to them and what would they say to you?
MJ: I am always surprised, delighted, and intrigued to hear women talk about acting. Historically, their voices have been suppressed, and their practice tends to cleave closer to the supportive and observant nature of the actor’s work.
So, I would invite three great stage actresses of the twentieth century to meet: Olga Knipper (of the Moscow Art Theatre), Helene Weigel (of the Berliner Ensemble), and Dame Peggy Ashcroft (of the Royal Shakespeare Company). Having never seen them on stage, I would say: “People have said you are the greatest. Is it true?”
And they will answer me, “Yes, and here’s why and how!” They probably would never say such a thing, but that’s where my imagination ends.
JS: Please describe at least one major turning point in your life that helped to make you who you are as a creative artist.
MJ: Having the great fortune, as a young person, to spend three years in an acting academy as a fellow-student of Canadian stage director Peter Hinton. His dedication to artistry and excellence set the benchmark for me.
JS: What are the hardest things for an outsider to understand about your life as a person in the arts?
MJ: That the outsider needn’t be outside. There is a way for everyone into the arts. All it takes is an open mind and heart.
JS: Please tell us what you haven’t attempted as yet that you would like to do in the arts? Why the delay so far?
MJ: I have never done a full-length one-person show. Probably because I am so committed to the idea of a company of actors. Also, fear of what it might reveal about myself that I do not yet know.
JS: If you could re-live your life in the arts, how would you change it and why?
MJ: This is purely hypothetical, but there are certain career opportunities that presented themselves to me as a younger actor that I chose not to take. I always thought they’d “come around again”. Through living longer, I’ve realized that some things may come only once, if at all.
JS: In your creative life thus far, what have been the most helpful comments you have heard about your work?
MJ: Inevitably, the most helpful comments are craft-oriented: they arrive from other practitioners, and are often very specific, and frequently banal. However, they are always useful.
JS: If you yourself were a critic of the arts discussing your work, be it something specific or in general, what would you say?
MJ: That I sometimes try too hard. And that it is always better when I don’t, but simply do the work at hand honestly and unselfconsciously.
JS: Finally, what do you yourself find to be the most intriguing and/or surprising things about you?
MJ: That – after having made my professional stage debut at ten and my film debut at eleven – I am still an actor nearly five decades on. Maybe not the most notable thing about me but, as a performing artist, rather astonishing.