"Maria," by Isaac Babel. US Premiere.

Maria, one of two plays by Soviet-Jewish writer, journalist and playwright Isaac Babel (1894-1940), is set in 1920, toward the end of the Russian Civil War-a time of desperation, violence and corruption. The Soviet takeover and the suffering wrought by war have combined to tear away the boundaries that once separated class from class. The languid aristocracy and intelligentsia of a pre-revolutionary, Chekhovian world find themselves throwing in their lot with Jewish mobsters, crippled smugglers, secret police . . .

On May 15, 1939, Isaac Babel, world-famous author of Red Cavalry and perhaps the most translated Soviet author of his generation, was arrested in the middle of the night and taken to the headquarters of the Soviet secret police. He was executed on January 27 in the Lubyanka prison. His papers, confiscated during his arrest, have never been recovered. All official record of his existence was erased until he was officially "rehabilitated" in 1954. Maria did not receive its Russian premiere until 1994.

This US premiere is being produced in conjunction with an international conference at Stanford University, "The Enigma of Isaac Babel" (Feb. 29-Mar. 2), organized by Gregory Freidin (Slavic), Gabriella Safran (Slavic and Jewish Studies), and Steven Zipperstein (History and Jewish Studies), and the exhibition "Isaac Babel: A Writer's Life," on display at the Herbert Hoover Memorial Exhibit Pavilion (next to Hoover Tower), Jan. 20-Mar. 2, 2004. For more information on the Isaac Babel events at Stanford, http://www.stanford.edu/group/isaac_babel";>click here.

Featured on KQED's "Forum" with Michael Krasny, Monday Feb. 16th. http://www.kqed.org/programs/program-archive.jsp?progID=RD19&;ResultStart=1&ResultCount=10&type=radio">Listen to the interview here.