The King of Hearts Is Off Again

Piotr Borowski, a student and collaborator of Jerzy Grotowski and co-founder of Gardzienice Theatre, has created a stage adaptation of Chasing the King of Hearts by Hannah Kroll. The book is a 2007 bestseller of spiritual survival in the fateless universe of the Holocaust. Borowski’s play, The King of Hearts is Off Again, is a memory piece with physical theater that has been presented in California and the Midwest.

The play is the real-life story of a Jewish woman, Izolda Regenberg, who set out to save her husband from the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz by disguising herself and living as an Aryan. She succeeded. The story of their survival–through bribery, terror, rapes, escapes from death camps, prostitution and more–is staged with four actors playing 22 parts.