Staging the Holocaust
The Shoah in Drama and Performance

This book considers Holocaust plays 'in performance' and the legitimacy of presenting the Holocaust on the stage.

Claude Schumacher (Edited by)

9780521035200, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 December 2006

372 pages, 36 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.3 x 2.3 cm, 0.566 kg

"...the exceptionally thought-provoking volume entitled, Staging the Holocaust: The Shoah in Drama and Performance...offers us chapter after chapter introducing and analyzing the work of various theatre artists from all over the world who have taken up this weighty challenge." Dr. Diane Cypkin, Iyar-Sivan

'To portray the Holocaust, one has to create a work of art', says Claude Lanzmann, the director of Shoah. However, can the Holocaust be turned into theatre? Is it possible to portray on stage events that, by their monstrosity, defy human comprehension? These are the questions addressed by the playwrights and the scholars featured in this book. Their essays present and analyse plays performed in Israel, America, France, Italy, Poland and, of course, Germany. The style of presentation ranges from docudramas to avant-garde performances, from realistic impersonation of historical figures to provocative and nightmarish spectacles. The book is illustrated with original production photographs and some rare drawings and documents; it also contains an important descriptive bibliography of more than two hundred Holocaust plays.

List of illustrations
Notes on contributors
Introduction Claude Schumacher
1. Holocaust theatre and the problem of justice Robert Skloot
2. The power and limits of the metaphor of survivors' testimony Hank Greenspan
3. On the fantastic in Holocaust performances Freddie Rokem
4. The Holocaust experience through theatrical profanation Gad Kaynar
5. Ben Hecht's pageant-drama: A Flag is Born Atay Citron
6. Theatrical interpretation of the Shoah: image and counter-image Dan Laor
7. Inadequate memories: the survivor in plays by Mann, Kesselman, Lebow and Baitz Alvin Goldfarb
8. Performing a Holocaust play in Warsaw in 1963 Seth Wolitz
9. Reality and illusion in the Theresienstadt cabaret Roy Kift
10. Liliane Atlan's Un Opéra pour Terezin Yehuda Moraly
11. History, utopia and the concentration camp in Gatti's early plays John Ireland
12. Armand Gatti and the silence of the 1059 days of Auschwitz Dorothy Knowles
13. Charlotte Delbo: theatre as a means of survival Claude Schumacher
14. Primo Levi's stage version of Se questo è un uomo Helga Finter
15. Heinar Kipphardt's Brother Eichmann Alexander Stillmark
16. George Tabori's mourning work in Jubiläum Anat Feinberg
17. Thomas Bernhard, Jews, Heldenplatz Jeanette R. Malkin
18. Select bibliography of Holocaust plays, 1933–1997 Alvin Goldfarb
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Theatre studies [AN]