M.F.A. Student Headed to Poland on Fulbright Award

M.F.A. in playwriting student Eri Nox is traveling to Poland later this year on a Fulbright Scholarship during which they will adapt a Polish play, helping to complete an effort they started last fall on a Tow Research Fellowship to the same country.

"I like travel and I really like immersing myself in other cultures," says Nox, who uses the pronoun they. "I feel like I think better when I can’t be distracted."

Nox began using the plural pronoun in 2016. Then, in a coincidence the following year, they discovered a section in a bookstore dedicated to the playwright Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, and ended up diving into a play they had first heard about during their undergraduate years.

"I pulled out Google Translate and started reading it there in the bookstore," says Nox, whose husband is Polish, though currently living in New York. "I was intrigued by the title."

The play, Oni, means they.

Nox did some research on Witkiewicz and became so absorbed, they ended up writing the first act of their adaptation while in Poland. They surmised that the playwright, who modern scholars say pushed his fiancée to suicide because of mind games he played with her, wrote the play as therapy.

Adapting the play may end up being a challenge.

"I have a lot of questions about the playwright’s life," says Nox, who will be staying about two hours outside of Krakow in the town of Zakopane, where Witkiewicz grew up. "He was known for being very manipulative. He treats some of the bad characters in the play as morally correct. I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to reconcile that."

Nox, who is also an adjunct lecturer in the M.F.A. program, will be in Poland for about five months. They will receive roughly $11,000 from the Fulbright Scholarship to cover their expenses while there.

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the scholarship was established after World War II to foster greater understanding between nations through educational exchange.