Theatre in a Graveyard: Representations of the Holocaust in Musical Theatre
Verena Arndt
|
VERENA ARNDT achieved her BA and MA degree in Theatre Studies at the Institute for Film, Theater and Empirical Cultural studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Before receiving a PhD scholarship, she was employed as a research assistant in theater studies and also gained work experience in theater praxis in the field of theatre pedagogics and as an assistant director. Her primary research interest is in the area of tension between entertainment and political theater. This is already evident in her master's thesis "Where was the Comedy"- Laughter facing the Unimaginable in Theatre and Film after 1945, which won the award for the best master thesis 2016/17 of the Association for European Jewish Literature Studies.
|
Abstract
Theatre persisted through the worst catastrophe Western civilization ever faced: the torture and mass murder of millions of people by the Nazis in the years 1933-1945. Even in the darkest hour theatre performances and other forms of entertainment were created by the victims in ghettos and even concentration camps. Today, there are only a few survivors of the Holocaust left to tell their stories in person and keep the memory alive. New ways of ensuring that the Shoah will never be forgotten have to be found and theatre seems to be one relevant means to achieve that. In this article I examine the representation of the Holocaust in popular musical theatre and explore three examples of how theatre has broached this challenging subject: Imagine This (2008), Ghetto (1984), and Love is looking for a room (1941). Those examples have the following in common: 1) The plot is set in a Nazi ghetto in the early 1940s, 2) most of the main characters are imprisoned Jews; 3) music is an integral part of the performance; and 4) each example features some of the characters as actors or musicians themselves, which leads to play-within-a-play situations or diegetic live-music. Apart from these similarities, the examples differ immensely in aesthetic style, plot, and the public reaction. The article seeks to illuminate the broad spectrum of musical theatre and the fine line it walks with regard to the Shoah discourse.
Theatre persisted through the worst catastrophe Western civilization ever faced: the torture and mass murder of millions of people by the Nazis in the years 1933-1945. Even in the darkest hour theatre performances and other forms of entertainment were created by the victims in ghettos and even concentration camps. Today, there are only a few survivors of the Holocaust left to tell their stories in person and keep the memory alive. New ways of ensuring that the Shoah will never be forgotten have to be found and theatre seems to be one relevant means to achieve that. In this article I examine the representation of the Holocaust in popular musical theatre and explore three examples of how theatre has broached this challenging subject: Imagine This (2008), Ghetto (1984), and Love is looking for a room (1941). Those examples have the following in common: 1) The plot is set in a Nazi ghetto in the early 1940s, 2) most of the main characters are imprisoned Jews; 3) music is an integral part of the performance; and 4) each example features some of the characters as actors or musicians themselves, which leads to play-within-a-play situations or diegetic live-music. Apart from these similarities, the examples differ immensely in aesthetic style, plot, and the public reaction. The article seeks to illuminate the broad spectrum of musical theatre and the fine line it walks with regard to the Shoah discourse.
| etudesdec2020arndt.pdf |
