Nobody Told Me: Debut play by Luc Albinski

We are very excited to share that one of our clients, Luc Albinski, has staged his first play, Nobody Told Me, in Johannesburg this year to much critical acclaim. Luc worked with one of our coaches, Stephen Brown – a playwright, dramaturg and creative writing tutor.

Luc writes: “My deepest professional gratitude goes to Stephen Brown, recommended through the Writing Coach organisation led by Jacqui Lofthouse. Stephen brought to the project an exceptional combination of enthusiasm, discipline, insight, and deep knowledge of dramatic structure. His engagement was sustained, rigorous, and unfailingly professional. He challenged, refined, stabilised, and strengthened the work at every critical juncture. Quite simply, he was the rock on which this project was built.”

A family story shaped by history

Nobody Told Me is based on the life of Luc’s grandmother, Dr Halina Rotstein, a Jewish physician at the Warsaw Ghetto’s Czyste Hospital, and on the childhood memories of her daughter, Wanda. The play is told through Wanda, now in her eighties, and her son Luc, moving between their present-day conversation and the world of 1930s–40s Warsaw where a circle of young doctors known as Halina’s Talmidim navigate love, idealism, fractured loyalties and impossible choices.

Rather than presenting history as a static reconstruction, the production focuses on the emotional and moral landscape behind it: the quiet details of family life, the pressures of medical work inside the ghetto, and the kinds of decisions for which there were no simple answers. It centres on the daily work and emotional burden carried by Jewish doctors and families living through occupation, allowing both Polish and Jewish memory to be seen in all their complexity.

At its heart are questions about what is passed down through families and what remains hidden. As Wanda and her son talk, fragments of her childhood return, taking the story back to Warsaw and to her mother and her colleagues. Their annual gatherings at Café Sztuka trace the shift from pre-war optimism to wartime reality. Inside the ghetto, the group faces choices between duty, survival and personal loyalty, and the narrative moves between those memories and the present day, showing how silence and inherited history continue to shape identity long after the events themselves.

Staging memory

The production uses a stylised theatrical approach rather than naturalistic reconstruction, with actors shifting between roles and time periods. The aim is not to recreate events exactly as they happened, but to explore their emotional and ethical impact across generations. The result is a piece that moves between past and present, between personal memory and shared history, and between what was said and what remained unspoken.

Critical acclaim

The play has been well received by reviewers and audiences. Barry Morisse, a South African theatre reviewer writing on barrymorisse.com, says it is “not an easy evening at the theatre” and that it “makes demands of its audience,” describing it as “harrowing and deeply emotional, yet at its heart, a love story.”

Writing in Daily Maverick, arts journalist and theatre critic Douglas Mason calls it “this beautiful new play” built from “gripping material” that moves between present-day South Africa and the Warsaw Ghetto while exploring courage, duty and the choices people faced.

Bruce Dennill, a South African arts journalist and theatre critic who runs the culture site brucedennill.co.za, highlights the scale of the production and the work of the cast. In his review he notes that the actors take on multiple roles and that performer Dihan Keun brings “admirable intensity” to the stage. In a related interview for the same site with actor Aimèe Mica Komorowsky, the play is described as a story shaped by courage, duty and difficult choices, bringing together love, betrayal, humour and horror in one piece.

Coverage of the Johannesburg run in the Sandton Chronicle (The Citizen) reported that “every seat was taken” at Theatre on the Square, with extra chairs added along the walkways for opening performances.

Together, the reviews point to a production that tackles family history, memory and silence head-on, using one family’s story to open up a wider conversation about identity and what gets passed down.

Credit for all photos: Thom Pierce