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

How could Jews have created art and attended performances in the midst of the unspeakable adversity of the Holocaust? This volume collects critical essays, memoirs and primary source materials relating to the history of Jewish drama, cabaret, music and opera under the Third Reich.

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.

'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.

"In [Muller's] writings...you will find remarkable wit, intelligence, and beauty." -Tony Kushner

Plunka argues that drama is the ideal art form to revitalize the collective memory of Holocaust resistance. This comparative drama study examines a variety of international plays - some quite well-known, others more obscure - that focus on collective or individual defiance of the Nazis.

Explores the irreverent theater of George Tabori and its enduring legacy within Holocaust theater