Background: Kosciuszko was born in February 1746 in a manor house on the estate called "Mereczowszczyzna" near Kosow, (now Kosava, Belarus) in Nowogrodek Voivodeship, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. His exact birthdate is unknown; commonly cited are February 4 and February 12. Kosciuszko was the youngest son of a member of the szlachta (nobility), Ludwik Tadeusz Kosciuszko, an officer in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Army, and his wife Tekla, nee Ratomska. The Kosciuszkos held the Polish Roch III coat of arms.
Context: In 1768, civil war broke out in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, when the Bar Confederation sought to depose King Stanislaw August Poniatowski. One of Kosciuszko's brothers, Jozef, fought on the side of the insurgents. Faced with a difficult choice between the rebels and his sponsors--the King and the Czartoryski family, who favored a gradualist approach to shedding Russian domination--Kosciuszko chose to leave Poland. In late 1769, he and a colleague, the noted artist Aleksander Orlowski, were granted royal scholarships, and on October 5 they set off for Paris. They wanted to further their military education, but as foreigners they were barred from enrolling in French military academies, and so they enrolled instead in the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. There Kosciuszko pursued his interest in drawing and painting and took private lessons in architecture from the noted French architect Jean-Rodolphe Perronet.  Kosciuszko, however, did not give up on improving his military knowledge. He audited lectures for five years and frequented the libraries of the Paris military academies. His exposure to the French Enlightenment, along with the religious tolerance practiced in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, strongly influenced his later career. The French economic theory of physiocracy made a particularly strong impression on his thinking. He also developed his artistic skills, and while his career would take him in a different direction, all his life he continued drawing and painting.  In the First Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772, Russia, Prussia and Austria annexed large swaths of Polish-Lithuanian territory and gained influence over the internal politics of the reduced Polish and Lithuanian states. When Kosciuszko finally returned home in 1774, he found that his brother Jozef had squandered most of the family fortune, and there was no place for him in the Army, as he could not afford to buy an officer's commission. He took a position as tutor to the family of the magnate, province governor (voivode) and hetman Jozef Sylwester Sosnowski and fell in love with the governor's daughter Ludwika. Their elopement was thwarted by her father's retainers. Kosciuszko received a thrashing at their hands, an event that may have led to his later antipathy to class distinctions.  In the autumn of 1775, he decided to emigrate to avoid Sosnowski and his retainers. In late 1775, he attempted to join the Saxon army but was turned down and decided to return to Paris. There he learned of the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, in which the British colonies in North America had revolted against the crown and begun their struggle for independence. The first American successes were well-publicized in France, and the French people and government openly supported the revolutionaries' cause.
Question: So what did they do then?
Answer: they enrolled instead in the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture.

Problem: Background: Victor Jara was born in 1932 in Lonquen, near Santiago, to two peasants, Manuel Jara and Amanda Martinez. His father was illiterate and encouraged his children to work from an early age to help the family survive, rather than attend school. By the age of 6, Jara was already working on the land. His father could not support the family on his earnings as a peasant at the Ruiz-Tagle estate, nor was he able to find stable work.
Context: After joining the choir at the University of Chile in Santiago, Jara was convinced by a choir-mate to pursue a career in theater. He subsequently joined the university's theater program and earned a scholarship for talent. He appeared in several of the university's plays, gravitating toward those with social themes, such as Russian playwright Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths, a depiction of the hardships of lower-class life.  In 1957, he met Violeta Parra, a singer who had steered folk music in Chile away from the rote reproduction of rural materials toward modern song composition rooted in traditional forms, and who had established musical community centers called penas to incorporate folk music into the everyday life of modern Chileans. Jara absorbed these lessons and began singing with a group called Cuncumen, with whom he continued his explorations of Chile's traditional music. He was deeply influenced by the folk music of Chile and other Latin American countries, and by artists such as Parra, Atahualpa Yupanqui, and the poet Pablo Neruda.  In the 1960s, Jara started specializing in folk music and sang at Santiago's La Pena de Los Parra, owned by Angel Parra. Through these activities, he became involved in the Nueva Cancion movement of Latin American folk music. He released his first album, Canto a lo humano, in 1966, and by 1970, he had left his theater work in favor of a career in music. His songs were inspired by a combination of traditional folk music and left-wing political activism. From this period, some of his best-known songs are "Plegaria a un Labrador" ("Prayer to a Worker") and "Te Recuerdo Amanda" ("I Remember You Amanda").
Question: What plays?
Answer:
Russian playwright Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths, a depiction of the hardships of lower-class life.