Adams Theater Presents A Staged Reading, “The Refuseniks,” About Soviet Jewry
The play is a dramatized story of the real Refuseniks, Russian Jews who were refused exit visas in the face of antisemitism.
Berkshire County has long been known as a community that presents standout summer stock theater. From the Berkshire Theatre Festival, which will celebrate its centennial anniversary in three short years, to the Williamstown Theatre Festival and Barrington Stage Company, all are well known to actors, playwrights, dramaturgs, and audiences.
The Adams Theater is the new kid on the theatrical block. Owner Yina Moore piloted programming at the former cinema in downtown Adams in 2022 and 2023 in the midst of auditorium renovations. Now a full-fledged nonprofit arts organization, The Adams Theater Presents opened its 2024 season this spring with music, comedy, and “Robert Frost: This Verse Business,” a play performed by Emmy-winning actor Gordon Clapp.
Its next theatrical presentation — one that should not be missed — is a staged reading of “The Refuseniks,” a brand-new play by New York-based Alison Bendix, directed by Berkshire legend Tony Simotes, August 9-11.
Set in the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, the plot centers around Yuri Alexandrov, a physicist; his wife Leya, a doctor; and their son Ari — all Russian Jews — who find themselves living in a tenement apartment with five other Jewish families. Once considered members of the intellectual elite, they were forced out of their jobs and homes after applying for exit visas.
Handcuffed demonstrators campaigning for Refuseniks in front of the Russian Trade Delegation in Amsterdam. The sign on the left says "Let My People Go". May 24, 1972. Image courtesy Dutch National Archives via Wikimedia Commons.
The story of the Refuseniks is one moment in a long history of oppression of Russian Jews, once the largest concentration of Jewish people in the world. As Russian antisemitism spread throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Jewish history, culture, language, and religion were effectively erased. Jewish parents would conceal their heritage from their children to protect them from discrimination and ostracization.
Western cultural activism and American political movements of the 1960s lead more Russian Jews to embrace their identity and emigrate to the newly formed state of Israel, or “make Aliyah.” But Jews who applied for an exit visa effectively outed themselves to the Russian government and faced economic hardship, harassment, and imprisonment.
“They said they didn’t want to send qualified specialists to the enemy state of Israel,” said Evgeny Lein, a Russian mathematician, in Laura Bialis’s 2007 documentary “Refusenik.” “Then the hard years of refusal began, because we were fired from work the day we applied to leave for Israel.”
Although Bendix’s play is fictional, she wrote the story based on people she met and situations she experienced when visiting Russia in 1978 with her husband and two children. Activist groups would send American citizens to the county as cultural tourists, who would then speak with Refuseniks in their apartments or outside synagogues.
“I had heard about these Refuseniks — that’s why I went to the Student Struggle for Soviet [Jewry],” says Bendix, who flew to Moscow with the help of the organization. “I went to the opera, the ballet. But I was curious [about the Refuseniks] and wanted to meet them. We were invited to this English-speaking club. It was there where I said, ‘This is a play.’”
Bendix’s lead, Yuri, is desperate to provide a better life for himself and his family. In the process, he divorces his wife, a sacrifice intended to give Leya a better opportunity to obtain an exit visa. “People had done that in Russia,” Bendix says. “Everything in the play is true.”
Yuri, Leya, Ari, and Yuri’s mother Olga are just four of the play’s 11 characters, all portrayed by actors familiar to Berkshire audiences, including Annette Miller and Rocco Sisto. The production was cast by Tony Simotes, former assistant director and founding member of Shakespeare & Company. Bendix, who has summered in the Berkshires since childhood, sought out Simotes, who now lives and works in central Florida, and personally requested that he come to Adams to direct. “He was thrilled to do this play,” she says. “Ryan [Winkles, who portrays a KGB officer in the production], was one of my favorites at Shakespeare & Company. I’m thrilled that he’s in it.”
Simotes, for his part, loves working with new material. Some of the world premieres he directed or championed at Shakespeare & Company include “Satchmo at the Waldorf” by Terry Teachout, “Mengelberg and Mahler” by Daniel Klein, "Cassandra Speaks" by Norman Plotkin, and "Leap Year" by William Coe Bigelow.
“It was always a part of my mission that we were developing new work,” explains Simotes about his time in Lenox. “It’s really a unique experience when you’re reading something that hasn’t been done.”
The production itself will echo the rawness of the venue and the play. In lieu of a formal set. Simotes has tasked local artist Joe Wheaton with creating projections that evoke a certain mood: chaos, anger, oppression, anxiety, captivity. With only four days to rehearse with the cast, coordinate blocking, adjust the projections, and integrate live music, Simotes is excited by the creativity inherent in this improvisational process, and sees a parallel between the emergence of the production within a “new creative environment.”
“The Berkshires have always been a creative home for me,” he says. “Talking to Yina gave me the sense that something really terrific is being born in Adams, and that made me really excited to want to do it there.”
"The Refuseniks," A Staged Reading
August 9-11
The Adams Theater
27 Park Street, Adams, MA
