Many Americans are unaware of the struggles immigrants face when they move to this country. People come here with hope and excitement for freedom and success―it’s a beautiful thing, but unfortunately they are typically faced with poverty, racism and misguided charity. Hunting Cockroaches, a surreal, black comedy by Janusz Glowacki, examines the lives of Polish emigrants during a sleepless night in their Manhattan apartment. Throughout the play, visions of the past, present and future appear, exploring how their lives have changed and could change still.
Hunting Cockroaches will be presented by Glacity Theatre Collective, revived with original cast during the Lagrange Street Polish Festival July 12, 13 and 14 at the Ohio Theatre. The cast reinvented and revisited the piece under the direction of GTC’s Artistic Director Edmund Lingan, who also directed the production last year. “What has been fun this time around has been stepping back as director and letting the actors run in new creative directions that respond to where we left off the first time we staged this production,” Lingan states.
The actors were given creative freedom with this re-staging and were able to come up with and build on many ideas of their own. “The cast and director have discovered new things this time around. It’s a great experience to build on something we’ve already done and find new meaning in the show,” says Ben Pryor who stars in four separate roles in this production.
Jennifer Nagy Lake, plays Anka, a successful actress in Poland, unable to do the same in America. In regards to reviving the show she says, “I have found more depth, more angst, more comedy and more warmth in the relationship between Anka and Janek (Cornel Gabara). It has been less like work and more like play.”
Pamela Tomassetti, a regular cast member of Glacity shows, performs as multiple characters in this play including the immigration officer, a secret policeman and an exuberant New York wife who tries to “help” the couple. With a Polish background herself, Tomassetti has loved working on this show and finding new ways to perceive the text. “The playwright artfully uses absurdism to describe the insane world of Soviet-dominated Poland―the couple is haunted―secret police and government censors literally emerge like cockroaches from beneath the protagonists’ bed,” Tomassetti states.
Glowacki, the playwright, took influences from her firsthand experiences, from both living in Poland and living in New York as a Polish immigrant. She was inspired by the people she met in Tompkins Square Park, her neighbors ,and her experiences in Poland to create characters such as the bum and immigration officer featured in this play.
“I love the way this play blends human passion and suffering with a light sense of comedy. I also love its hallucinatory qualities,” says Lingan.
Pryor said, “The play is a reminder of the importance of art in a society that is in danger of losing its imagination.”
“Hunting Cockroaches” will run at the Ohio Theatre Friday, July 12, through Sunday, July 14 at 8pm, Friday and Saturday, and 2pm on Sunday. Tickets are $16 with proof of Polish Festival admission, $20 without. If tickets are ordered in advance, admission to the Polish Festival is included. Ohio Theatre, 3114 Lagrange St. 419-261-4088. glacity.org
