Elie Wiesel’s “The Choice” Premieres at Sanders Theatre

“We are all minorities; we are all different,” says UNESCO artist for peace and director of “The Choice” Guila Clara Kessous prior to the play’s world premiere in Sanders Theatre on Sunday. “ And we are all having a certain story, history [...] that could suddenly condemn ourselves as different because we have different parents, or because we were born somewhere in the wrong timing.” Written by Nobel Peace Prize recipient and renowned Holocaust author Elie Wiesel, “The Choice” tells the story of a resistance movement and the harrowing struggle of a duty-bound soldier assigned to select and execute one of three hostages. Protagonist Misha, played by Israeli muay thai boxing champion Ilya Grad, considers fleeing, but muses, “Wherever we go, we’ll always be obliged to choose,” introducing the audience to the play’s main theme of individual responsibility in the face of ideological conflicts.

Although the show premiered on Sunday, it was written not long after Wiesel’s 1945 liberation from Buchenwald. Specific details of its origin remain unclear, and the play was only recently rediscovered by Joel Rappel, the director of the Elie Wiesel archives at Boston University, in the course of his work compiling Wiesel’s collected writings. What is known is that the play is one of Wiesel’s earliest. “Even Elie Wiesel did not recall the existence of the play,” Rappel said in the introductory statement to Sunday’s ceremony.

“What we know is that this was the first play he wrote, but we don’t know exactly the time it was written,” Kessous says. Kessous suggests that, because of its status as an early work, “The Choice” allows viewers insight into the development of Wiesel’s writing.“This work has all of the seeds that Elie Wiesel will use to create the thematics of these future books.  Anything dealing with death, anything dealing with responsibility of having a life,” she says.

Kessous has collaborated extensively with Wiesel in the past: He served as her graduate advisor during her time at Boston University, and she previously directed the premiere of his play “Zalmen or the Madness of God." Her familiarity with Wiesel’s artistry contributed to her ability to convey his vision for this latest play. “He really wants [it] to be extremely sober,” she says. This directive gave rise to a stark set consisting of nothing but a table, covered with black cloth and surrounded by six chairs, and microphones against a background of four black and white panels displaying Holocaust survivors.

According to Kessous, despite the fact that the play derives its inspiration from the Holocaust—its release coincides closely with the 70th anniversary of Yom HaShoah, known in English as Holocaust Remembrance Day—its themes remain relevant to modern-day viewers, particularly in regard to issues of religious extremism. “It’s very close to what we are living today with fanaticism in any religion,” Kessous says. “Whenever someone suddenly talks about this being the only truth, otherwise the person cannot live—I think those are very important elements that we need to recognize so then we realize that the person is in danger and that we need to do something.”

For all of its focus on the atrocities of genocide through the eyes of its survivors, however, “The Choice” ends on an optimistic note as Misha makes the decision to disobey his orders by allowing his hostages to remain alive. It’s a message that Kessous hopes will be inspirational to those who see the play. “I do think that by doing this, I really insist about the fantastic testimony of life those people are able to tell,” Kessous says. “We can make it, if we all help and watch each other. We can make it.”