There are plays that tell us something we already suspect; then there are productions that insist we feel it in our ribs. Head Trick Theatre’s staging of Dr. Korczak and the Children by Erwin Sylvanus (translation by George E. Wellwarth) belongs to the latter — intimate, unsparing, and quietly furious.

At its core is the moral tension between care and power. This production resists melodrama, trusting stillness and small gestures. Beginning with The Narrator, who provides the audience with a choice to stay or to leave - a warning for what’s to come. While the story takes place during WWII, it is all uncomfortably close to today’s headlines.

Dr. Janusz Korczak (born Henryk Goldszmit, 1878–1942) was a Polish-Jewish pediatrician, educator, and children’s author who became internationally known for his progressive ideas about child welfare and rights. He ran an orphanage in Warsaw during WWII for primarily Jewish children and refused offers of freedom. He chose instead to accompany the orphans to the Treblinka extermination camp, where he perished with them in 1942.

Director, Rebecca Maxfield, is confident and exacting in her choices, maintaining a clear dramaturgical line while giving the actors space to explore contradictions. Once the actors are brought to the stage, they deliberate between themselves as to the accuracy in which they are able to present this story - its authenticity, and importance - before they take over the play’s characters. The tone Maxfield creates avoids both sentimentality and cynicism, a difficult but rewarding equilibrium.

The four principal performances carry the emotional weight. As Korczak, Fred P. Dodge offers quiet gravity without hero worship. Dodge’s is a portrayal of stubborn empathy — hands repairing, eyes cataloguing, voice rationing, small mercies. A stellar performance. Opposite him, Jeff H. Nguyen as the conflicted official makes policy into a moral gray zone, showing how cruelty can be administered in the language of care and efficiency. It is understandable how ordering inhuman acts are justified as duty. The alternative is undeniably weighted with self-accountability — or choice.

Julia Little, portraying children (or orphaned children) is innocently extraordinary, presenting heartbreaking trust, while Emma Starbird as head nurse attempts to anchor the turbulence - optimistically hopeful. Together, the cast embody the resilience and fragility of this time capsule giving the ensemble the feeling of a complicated family rather than a historical tableau.

While the play is rooted in history, this production refuses to stay in the past. Parallels to our own moment — families displaced, bureaucratic indifference to suffering, debates over who is “worthy” of protection — emerge naturally from this production. The most chilling echo is the reminder that the language of safety is often used to justify confinement, and that policies once unthinkable can quickly become routine.

It is the heartbreaking narration of Cheryl Dedora-Pynn who holds together a complex quilt of unspeakable horror infused with courageous action. Dedora-Pynn provides the thread of continuity revealing a truth from which we are unable to look away. The ending offers no neat resolution. Instead, it leaves a charged absence — a call to remembrance not as ceremony, but as ongoing moral practice. It will frustrate those seeking closure, but that is the point.

This production of Dr. Korczak and the Children is lean, humane theatre — rigorous rather than indulgent — that insists on empathy as an active discipline. In a world continually rearranging its cruelties, it shows that the smallest acts of fidelity to another person can still be a form of resistance. That is theatre put to its highest use.

Where:     Head Trick Theatre

AS220 – Black Box

95 Empire Street, Providence

When:      August 14–24

               Thursday & Friday–7:00 p.m.

               Saturday – 2:00 & 7:00 p.m.

               Sunday – 2:00 p.m.

Tickets:    $30.00

Pay-What-You-Can

Thursdays: Free with

Brown ID