From Witness to Parable is a multi-year experiment in using creative research to teach about the past. It is also a search for a contemporary form of dialogue capable or properly presenting the “grand stories of the twentieth century.”
The process begins with the discovery of an original and highly personal source material – archival records, a letter, a memory, or perhaps a family legend – that reflects the dramatic experience of a larger group, oppressed minority, or political dissidents living under totalitarian rule.
Although the Memorial of Silence focuses mainly on remembering and studying the period of the Second World War, the stories of Prague’s deported Jewish citizens include chapters that took place before and after the war. They involve concepts such as propaganda, censorship, racial discrimination, Nazism, racism…
The educational seminars that we have organized for the past five years include workshops involving creative activities associated with the search for ways of presenting stories of the past through theater or film. We offer lessons on how to identify a suitable subject, seminars on turning this subject into a script, and preparations for realizing it in the form of amateur film or theater. The creative sessions also include an analysis of finished works and presentations of the best projects, suitable for public performance.
Our seminars are designed mainly for secondary-school students (grades 6–13) or for students of after-school art programs. We work with creative groups of consisting of a teacher and a “working collective.” We also hold motivational and organizational seminars for teachers.
In 2023–2025, we plan to turn these occasional seminars into regular creative workshops that become established educational modules of the future Memorial of Silence once it opens after Bubny Station’s successful renovation.
