Israeli Holocaust Drama


Book Description

This collection brings together for the first time the dramatic responses to the Holocaust from two generations of Israel playwrights. Leah Goldberg, Aharon Megged, and Ben Zion Tomer survived the Holocaust and settled in Israel after the war. Their plays explore survival issues and the concepts of heroism and of good and evil in a candid, straightforward manner.




Holocaust Drama


Book Description

The Holocaust - the systematic attempted destruction of European Jewry and other 'threats' to the Third Reich from 1933 to 1945 - has been portrayed in fiction, film, memoirs, and poetry. Gene Plunka's study will add to this chronicle with an examination of the theatre of the Holocaust. Including thorough critical analyses of more than thirty plays, this book explores the seminal twentieth-century Holocaust dramas from the United States, Europe, and Israel. Biographical information about the playwrights, production histories of the plays, and pertinent historical information are provided, placing the plays in their historical and cultural contexts.




The Pianist


Book Description

The memoir that inspired Roman Polanski's Oscar-winning film, which won the Cannes Film Festival's most prestigious prize—the Palme d'Or. Named one of the Best Books of 1999 by the Los Angeles Times On September 23, 1939, Wladyslaw Szpilman played Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor live on the radio as shells exploded outside—so loudly that he couldn't hear his piano. It was the last live music broadcast from Warsaw: That day, a German bomb hit the station, and Polish Radio went off the air. Though he lost his entire family, Szpilman survived in hiding. In the end, his life was saved by a German officer who heard him play the same Chopin Nocturne on a piano found among the rubble. Written immediately after the war and suppressed for decades, The Pianist is a stunning testament to human endurance and the redemptive power of fellow feeling.




Theatrical Performance During the Holocaust


Book Description

"Compelling and even poignant accounts of ghetto performances."--Ulrich Baer, German Studies Review




Darkness We Carry


Book Description

Offering an informed critical approach, Skloot discusses more than two dozen plays and one film that confront the issues and stories of the Holocaust.




Holocaust Theater


Book Description

Facts about the Holocaust are one way of learning about its devastating impact, but presenting personal manifestations of trauma can be more effective than citing statistics. Holocaust Theater addresses a selection of contemporary plays about the Holocaust, examining how collective and individual trauma is represented in dramatic texts, and considering the ways in which spectators might be swayed viscerally, intellectually, and emotionally by witnessing such representations onstage. Drawing on interviews with a number of the playwrights alongside psychoanalytic studies of survivor trauma, this volume seeks to foster understanding of the traumatic effects of the Holocaust on subsequent generations. Holocaust Theater offers a vital account of theater’s capacity to represent the effects of Holocaust trauma.




The End of the Holocaust


Book Description




Staging the Holocaust


Book Description

'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.




Lauren Yanofsky Hates the Holocaust


Book Description

Lauren Yanofsky doesn't want to be Jewish anymore. Her father, a noted Holocaust historian, keeps giving her Holocaust memoirs to read, and her mother doesn't understand why Lauren hates the idea of Jewish youth camps and family vacations to Holocaust memorials. But when Lauren sees some of her friends, including Jesse, a cute boy she likes, playing Nazi war games, she is faced with a terrible choice: betray her friends or betray her heritage. Told with engaging humor, Lauren Yanofsky Hates the Holocaust isn't simply about making tough moral choices. It's about a smart, funny, passionate girl caught up in the turmoil of bad-hair days, family friction, changing friendships, love, and, yes, the Holocaust.




Hana's Suitcase on Stage


Book Description

In the spring of 2000, Fumiko Ishioka, the curator of a small Holocaust education centre for children in Tokyo, received a special shipment of artifacts from the Auschwitz museum. Among the items was an empty suitcase. From the moment she saw it, Fumiko was captivated by the writing on the outside that identified its owner: Hana Brady, May 16, 1931, Waisenkind (the German word for orphan). Children visiting the centre were full of questions. Who was Hana Brady? Where did she come from? What happened to her? Fueled by the children's curiosity and her own need to know, Fumiko began a year of detective work, scouring the world for clues to the story of Hana Brady. Together with Fumiko, we learn of Hana's loving parents and older brother, George, and discover how the family's happy life in a small Czechoslovakian town was turned upside down by the invasion of the Nazis. Photographs and original wartime documents enhance this extraordinary story that bridges cultures, generations and time. This edition includes the original book as well as the full script of the play adaptation by Emil Sher.




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