The Theatre of the Holocaust, Volume 2: Six Plays

by Robert Skloot (Editor)

Overview

This second volume of The Theatre of the Holocaust, when combined with the first, represents the most significant and comprehensive international collection of plays on the Holocaust. Since the appearance of Volume 1 in 1982, theatre and Holocaust studies have undergone astonishing transformations. In Volume 2, Skloot presents six plays acknowleding the most recent theatrical forms in our post-modern age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299162740
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	04/08/1999
Edition description:	1
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Robert Skloot is professor in the Department of Theater and Drama and at the Center for Jewish Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and author of The Darkness We Carry: The Drama of the Holocaust, published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

Table of Contents

H. I. D. (Hess Is Dead), Howard Brenton
A dramatic encounter with the ghosts that haunt modern Europe.

Camp Comedy, Roy Kift
The career of the noted actor Kurt Gerron who was ordered by the Nazis to a film of a concentration camp in order to deceive the Red Cross.

Dreams of Anne Frank, Bernard Kops
The most famous Holocaust victim uses her extraordinary, artistic imagination to free herself from her attic prison through dreams of surrealistic wonder.

The Model Apartment, Donald Margulies
A sad journey of an elderly couple retiring to Florida turns into wild comedy.

The Survivor and the Translator, Leeny Sack
A performance art piece about the playwright’s grandmother, a concentration camp survivor.

Portage to San Cristobal of A. H., George Steiner (adapted for stage by Christopher Hampton)
The controversial political thriller based on the discovery of Adolf Hitler, at age 90, by an Israeli search party in the Brazilian jungle.

Editorial Reviews

The world, the theater, and our memory of mid-century events have changed since the first volume of this work was published in 1982. These are challenging plays that mark a radical departure in the artistic rendering of the Holocaust, forcing us to look beyond our assumptions about the artistic rendering of history. Roy Krift's Camp Comedy is a roundelay of illusions. Leeny Sack's The Survivor and the Translator presents memory over three generations in a one-woman tour de force. Bernard Kops's Dreams of Anne Frank is a play for children who may never have heard of Anne Frank, while Donald Margulies's The Model Apartment is a nightmare comedy of the impossibility of escaping memory. Derived from George Steiner's novella, Christopher Hampton's The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. presents an alternative history. Finally, Howard Brenton's H.I.D. (Hess Is Dead) is a postmodern fragmentation of historical events to synthesize a new emotion about them. A very impressive collection; for theater history collections in public and academic libraries.--Thomas E. Luddy, Salem State Coll., MA

Library Journal