“[The Messenger] is about the way history will repeat itself unless we do something to change that.” – Jenny Connell Davis, Playwright
In 1935, The Nuremberg Race Laws were established in Nazi Germany. These laws defined citizenship in the German Reich in violently narrow terms, ostracizing Jewish residents and others outside of mainstream Aryan society, and eventually led to the rise of Holocaust and slaughter of millions. On their face, these laws did not demand or encourage violence. They simply legalized the dehumanization and separation of portions of the German populace, and gave freedom to loosely trained pseudo-authorities to enforce these laws on their own terms.
If only this didn’t sound so familiar.
Jenny Connell Davis’ play The Messenger is a cautionary tale and a call to action. Entirely inspired by real words and real events, the play spans eight decades of history, from the origins of World War II to the 2020 Pandemic. It connects the dots between sentiment and action, for all its possible good, and all its possible evil.
The play centers on Georgia Gabor, a true historical figure. Georgia was a Hungarian-American math teacher at San Marino Middle School and a Holocaust survivor. Her story is represented in this play by her actual words (either from her writing or published interviews). She witnessed unimaginable cruelty and violence as a teenager, and she emigrated to the United States alone, as her entire family perished at the hands of the Nazis. She came to this country with a broken heart, and unflappable resolve. When greeted with an opposition to her truth by concerned parents, she was not about to back down.
While the other characters in this play are fictional, they represent very real ideas and lived experiences that existed in their respective time periods. “1969” represents a hypothetical peek at why an important piece of world history could have been kept locked away for so many years. In this branch of the story, sentiment and action are at odds – the character knows that the artifact she discovered should be shared with the public, but will she be able to do so, given her status as a student, a woman, and an outsider to the organization’s establishment?
“1993” represents numerous parents and others who were opposed to Georgia Gabor sharing her personal story with her students. The sentiment of a concerned parent is something most of us can relate to, but is the action that stemmed from the parent’s sentiment appropriate, or fair?
“2021” embodies the life of countless Asian-Americans living through the 2020 Pandemic and enduring a glut of racism and bigotry, often while in spaces that had previously been considered safe. But with the “freedom” of dehumanizing the other is granted by influential parties, the play asks us quite clearly – is anyone safe? Who is speaking out against such things?
The Messenger cautions us about the dangers of not seeing, and treating our fellow human beings with dignity. Beyond that, it implores us, all of us, to not stand idly by as injustice takes hold. Because the stakes of not speaking out are way too dire. We’ve been there before.
– Jonathan Josephson, Dramaturg