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While a frequently used term, Jewish Theatre has become a contested concept that defies precise definition. Is it theatre by Jews? For Jews? About Jews? Though there are no easy answers for these questions, "Jewish Theatre: A Global View," contributes greatly to the conversation by offering an impressive collection of original essays written by an international cadre of noted scholars from Europe, the United States, and Israel. The essays discuss historical and current texts and performance practices, covering a wide gamut of genres and traditions.
Jews and Theater in an Intercultural Context by Edna Nahshon Pdf
A collection of essays by an international cadre of theater scholars, which addresses Jewish theater practitioners, playwrights, critics, financiers and audiences roles in the development of the European and American theater.
While a frequently used term, Jewish Theatre has become a contested concept that defies precise definition. Is it theatre by Jews? For Jews? About Jews? Though there are no easy answers for these questions, Jewish Theatre: A Global View, contributes greatly to the conversation by offering an impressive collection of original essays written by an international cadre of noted scholars from Europe, the United States, and Israel. The essays discuss historical and current texts and performance practices, covering a wide gamut of genres and traditions.
Jews and Theater in an Intercultural Context by Edna Nahshon Pdf
Jewish theater practitioners, playwrights, critics, financiers and audiences have played an enormous role in the development of the European and American theater. "Jews and Theater in an Intercultural Context," a collection of essays by an international cadre of theater scholars, addresses this subject. Focusing on the role of Jews and Jewishness in the theatrical field it discusses the representation of Jews on the American, European, and South American stage, with a strong emphasis on twentieth century theater and the contemporary theatrical scene.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, a vibrant theatrical culture took shape on New York City's Lower East Side. Original dramas, comedies, musicals, and vaudeville, along with sophisticated productions of Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Chekhov, were innovatively staged for crowds that rivaled the audiences on Broadway. Though these productions were in Yiddish and catered to Eastern European, Jewish audiences (the largest immigrant group in the city at the time), their artistic innovations, energetic style, and engagement with politics and the world around them came to influence all facets of the American stage. Vividly illustrated and with essays from leading historians and critics, this book recounts the heyday of "Yiddish Broadway" and its vital contribution to American Jewish life and crossover to the broader American culture. These performances grappled with Jewish nationalism, labor relations, women's rights, religious observance, acculturation, and assimilation. They reflected a range of genres, from tear-jerkers to experimental theater. The artists who came of age in this world include Stella Adler, Eddie Cantor, Jerry Lewis, Sophie Tucker, Mel Brooks, and Joan Rivers. The story of New York's Yiddish theater is a tale of creativity and legacy and of immigrants who, in the process of becoming Americans, had an enormous impact on the country's cultural and artistic development.
Jewish drama and theatre has followed a tortuous path from extreme rabbinical intolerance to eventual secular liberalism, with its openness to the heritages of both Judaism as a culture and prominent foreign cultures, to the extent of multicultural integration. No wonder, therefore, that since biblical times until the seventeenth century there are only examples of tangential theatre practices. This initial intolerance, shared by the Church, was rooted in pagan connotations of theatre rather than in the neutral nature of the theatre medium, capable of formulating and communicating contrasting thoughts. Whereas by the tenth century the Church understood that theatre could be harnessed to its own ends, Jewish theatre was only created seven centuries later through spontaneous and amateurish theatrical practices, such as the Yiddish purim-shpil and the purim-rabbi. Due to their carnivalesque and cathartic nature these practices were tolerated by the rabbinical establishment, albeit only during the Purim holiday. But as a result, Jewish drama and theatre were created and emerged despite rabbinical antagonism. Under the influence of the Jewish Enlightenment, Yiddish-speaking theatres were increasingly established, a trend that became central in the cultural enterprise of the Jews in Israel. This process involved a renewed use of Hebrew as a spoken language, and the transition from a profound religious identity to a secular Jewish one, characterised by a basic liberalism to the extent of openness to cultures traditionally perceived as archetypal enemies of Judaism. This book sets out to analyse play-scripts and performance-texts produced in the Israeli theatre in order to illustrate these trends, and concludes that only a liberal society can bring about the full realisation of theatre's potentialities.
The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater by Alyssa Quint Pdf
Jewish Book Award Finalist: “Turns the fascinating life of Avrom Goldfaden into a multi-dimensional history of the Yiddish theater’s formative years.” —Jeffery Veidinger, author of Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire In this book, Alyssa Quint focuses on the early years of the modern Yiddish theater, from roughly 1876 to 1883, through the works of one of its best-known and most colorful figures, Avrom Goldfaden. Goldfaden (né Goldenfaden, 1840-1908) was one of the first playwrights to stage a commercially viable Yiddish-language theater, first in Romania and then in Russia. Goldfaden’s work was rapidly disseminated in print and his plays were performed frequently for Jewish audiences. Sholem Aleichem considered him as a forger of a new language that “breathed the European spirit into our old jargon.” Quint uses Goldfaden’s theatrical works as a way to understand the social life of Jewish theater in Imperial Russia. Through a study of his libretti, she looks at the experiences of Russian Jewish actors, male and female, to explore connections between culture as artistic production and culture in the sense of broader social structures. Quint explores how Jewish actors who played Goldfaden’s work on stage absorbed the theater into their everyday lives. Goldfaden’s theater gives a rich view into the conduct, ideology, religion, and politics of Jews during an important moment in the history of late Imperial Russia.
A Companion to British-Jewish Theatre Since the 1950s by Jeanette R. Malkin,Eckart Voigts,Sarah Jane Ablett Pdf
The first of its kind, this companion to British-Jewish theatre brings a neglected dimension in the work of many prominent British theatre-makers to the fore. Its structure reflects the historical development of British-Jewish theatre from the 1950s onwards, beginning with an analysis of the first generation of writers that now forms the core of post-war British drama (including Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter and Arnold Wesker) and moving on to significant thematic force-fields and faultlines such as the Holocaust, antisemitism and Israel/Palestine. The book also covers the new generation of British-Jewish playwrights, with a special emphasis on the contribution of women writers and the role of particular theatres in the development of British-Jewish theatre, as well as TV drama. Included in the book are fascinating interviews with a set of significant theatre practitioners working today, including Ryan Craig, Patrick Marber, John Nathan, Julia Pascal and Nicholas Hytner. The companion addresses, not only aesthetic and ideological concerns, but also recent transformations with regard to institutional contexts and frameworks of cultural policies.
The Post-traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor by Magda Romanska Pdf
Despite its international influence, Polish theatre remains a mystery to many Westerners. This volume attempts to fill in current gaps in English-language scholarship by offering a historical and critical analysis of two of the most influential works of Polish theatre: Jerzy Grotowski’s ‘Akropolis’ and Tadeusz Kantor’s ‘Dead Class’. By examining each director’s representation of Auschwitz, this study provides a new understanding of how translating national trauma through the prism of performance can alter and deflect the meaning and reception of theatrical works, both inside and outside of their cultural and historical contexts.
Nine Contemporary Jewish Plays by Ellen Schiff,Michael Posnick Pdf
Jewish theatre—plays about and usually by Jews—enters the twenty-first century with a long and distinguished history. To keep this vibrant tradition alive, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture established the New Play Commissions in Jewish Theatre in 1994. The commissions are awarded in an annual competition. Their goal is to help emerging and established dramatists develop new works in collaboration with a wide variety of theatres. Since its inception, the New Play Commissions has contributed support to more than seventy-five professional productions, staged readings, and workshops. This anthology brings together nine commissioned plays that have gone on to full production. Ellen Schiff and Michael Posnick have selected works that reflect many of the historical and social forces that have shaped contemporary Jewish experience and defined Jewish identity—among them, surviving the Holocaust, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the lives of newcomers in America, Israel, and Argentina. Following a foreword by Theodore Bikel, the editors provide introductory explanations of the New Play Commissions and an overview of Jewish theatre. The playwrights comment on the genesis of their work and its production history.
Author : Joel Berkowitz,Barbara Henry Publisher : Wayne State University Press Page : 396 pages File Size : 42,6 Mb Release : 2012-05-15 Category : Foreign Language Study ISBN : 9780814337196
“Makes new sense of aspects of popular culture we have all grown up with and thought we knew only too well. Most bridges religious studies and theater, political theory and American studies, high criticism and middlebrow performance. Her book will help us see better how Jews and their Jewishness did not merely ‘enter’ American popular culture, but did so much to invent it.”—Jonathan Boyarin Leonard and Tobee Kaplan Distinguished Professor of Modern Jewish Thought, University of North Carolina For centuries, Jews were one of the few European cultures without any official public theatrical tradition. Yet in the modern era, Jews were among the most important creators of popular theater and film–especially in America. Why? In Theatrical Liberalism, Andrea Most illustrates how American Jews used the theatre and other media to navigate their encounters with modern culture, politics, religion, and identity, negotiating a position for themselves within and alongside Protestant American liberalism by reimagining key aspects of traditional Judaism as theatrical. Discussing works as diverse as the Hebrew Bible, The Jazz Singer, and Death of a Salesman—among many others—Most situates American popular culture in the multiple religious traditions that informed the worldviews of its practitioners. Offering a comprehensive history of the role of Judaism in the creation of American entertainment, Theatrical Liberalism re-examines the distinction between the secular and the religious in both Jewish and American contexts, providing a new way of understanding Jewish liberalism and its place in a pluralist society. With extensive scholarship and compelling evidence, Theatrical Liberalism shows how the Jewish worldview that permeates American culture has reached far beyond the Jews who created it.
