Category Archives: Uncategorized

A Personal Welcome to the Holocaust Theater Catalog

A Message from Arnold Mittelman After a career in not-for-profit and commercial theater spanning more than 40 years I was honored in 2007 to found the National Jewish Theater / Foundation and in 2010 to assume leadership of its Holocaust Theater International Initiative. Although theater has played an extraordinary role from the 1930s to today […]

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

Many Questions and a Few Answers

by Robert Skloot 2022 NJTF HTII Lifetime Achievement Award AHO Winter Conference, Miami, FL I’d like to begin my remarks by asking the question that all of us have been asked often: “Why do you do the work you do?” There are, of course, many answers, but I’d imagine that most of us would point […]

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

Comments to the Association of Holocaust Organizations (AHO) Conference

Teresa Eyring Executive Director Theatre Communications Group (TCG) AHO Conference, Miami, FL TCG is a national organization for theatre, based in New York. Our mission is to lead for a just and thriving theatre ecology. And we have numerous programs and services, such as conferences, research, publishing of plays, and American Theatre magazine, grantmaking, and […]

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

Honoring Elie and Marion Wiesel for Their Plays

Elie Wiesel’s Plays as Kaddish: The Sacred Duty to Remember and Resist By Prof. Lori R. Weintrob Director, Wagner College Holocaust Center This article is an expanded version of remarks presented by author in conjunction with the National Jewish Theater Foundation /Holocaust Theater International Initiative 3rd Annual Remembrance Day Play Reading program honoring Elie and […]

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

NJTF HTII becomes part of UM MILLER CENTER

CLICK HERE to Download Press Release HOLOCAUST THEATER INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE BECOMES PART OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI’S SUE AND LEONARD MILLER CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY JUDAIC STUDIES. Through research and educational programs, the Holocaust Theater International Initiative fills a void and is the only comprehensive universitybased initiative focused on the importance and relevance of holocaust-related theater. […]

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

Theatrical Depictions of Survivor Stories

USC Shoah Foundation and National Jewish Theater Foundation Collaborate to Launch ‘This is What I’ve Scene,’ First Ever Theater-Related Activity To Be Provided to Students Worldwide Via IWitness Website   Click Here to Download Press Release Los Angeles, Dec. 8, 2015 – USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education and the National Jewish Theater Foundation and […]

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

On Resort 76: Jewish Drama and Putting the Audience Through a Difficult Evening By Bruce Cohen, MFA – the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater

During the month of October 2019, the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater, Theatre and Dance Department will produce Resort 76, Shimon Wincelberg’s drama of the Lodz ghetto. The play will run concurrent with complementary scholarly programs on campus and within the community. During the run, Bella Bryks-Klein (daughter of Rachmil Bryks, author of the source […]

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

NJTF Remembrance Readings Launched

On April 13, 2015 arts, educational and memorial organizations across the country united by participating in the first ever Remembrance Readings for Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah). This event was conceived and launched by the National Jewish Theater Foundation (NJTF) as a way of harnessing the unique power of theater to remember the Holocaust, honor its victims, and foster […]

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

Online Women, Theatre, and the Holocaust Resource Handbook

Published by Remember the Women Institute by Rochelle G. Saidel Remember the Women Institute published in April 2015 an online Women, Theatre, and the Holocaust Resource Handbook, available as a free downloadable PDF accessible from the website, www.rememberwomen.org. This handbook is one of the Institute’s projects dedicated to giving women their place in Holocaust history. […]

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

Almost Lost

Reviving a Comedy Written in Terezín in 1944 By Naomi Patz I’ve been obsessed with the cabaret called THE LAST CYCLIST for the past twenty years. Here’s how my involvement began: I had come home on a wintery Thursday morning in 1995 from meetings in Israel, jet-lagged and tired. My husband, Norman, who was for […]

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

Press: From the Cleveland Jewish News

What Were They Thinking: Archiving Anne Frank By: BOB ABELMAN Playwrights did not begin to describe and interpret the Holocaust experience until a decade after the end of World War II. It takes time to heal, generate the strength to reflect, and find a clear and steady voice. The most influential and lasting American effort […]

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

Reference Books

Enacting History:A Practical Guide to Teaching the Holocaust through Theater Mira Hirsch, Janet E. Rubin, Arnold Mittelman, Routledge, 2020. Dramatizing Survivor Trauma and its Effects on the Second Generation Gene A. Plunka, Routledge, 2017. Martin Sherman: Skipping over Quicksand Tish Dace, Jefferson, NC, & London: McFarland, 2012. Plays of the Holocaust: An International Anthology Elinor […]

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

Auschwitz-Birkenau: 70 Years After Liberation..A Warning to Future Generations

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

Holocaust Representation: Drama

by Robert Skloot (From The Cambridge Dictionary of Judaism and Jewish Culture, edited by Judith R. Baskin Copyright © 2011 Judith R. Baskin. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.) Playwrights did not begin to describe and interpret the Holocaust experience until a decade after the end of World War II. The most influential […]

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

Why Bent Now (2014)?

By Tish Dace Martin Sherman’s shattering Holocaust play Bent became the most-produced play worldwide written by an American during the 20th century’s last quarter. It receives productions 35+ years after its 1979 premiere at London’s Royal Court Theatre because bigots still slaughter or punish people who’re gay or “other.” As of May 1, 2011, when […]

Posted in Uncategorized Tags: Comments closed

Beyond the Holocaust

As contemporary genocides and atrocities continue to ravage civilization, theater artists voices will not and do not remain silent. Example: Theater and the Genocide in Rwanda

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

Interview with Andi Potamkin

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

Survivors Still Active in Creating Witness Theater

The following links/articles describe projects taking place in 2014 that involve the participation of living survivors in the ongoing creation of Holocaust related theater. Survivor memories of events that they witnessed and lived are transformed by passionate artists supported by committed students into a unique type of drama. Holocaust Stories Proves Therapeutic for Witness Theater […]

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

Comments from an Israeli Director

My name is Avivit Shaked and I am an Israeli Theatre Director and group facilitator. I’m working with groups of young pupils (in the 8th grade) and Holocaust Survivors. The name of the program is “Documentary Theatre for the Commemoration of the Holocaust in Israel”. In this program we are interacting young pupils with Holocaust […]

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

The Theatrical Representation of the Holocaust

by Juan Mayorga, Playwright
The image that many of us have of the Shoah is nurtured less from historians’ books than from artistic representations, some of which are offered by the theatre. This is not a new phenomenon. Many Athenians probably adopted the image of the Greeks’ victory against Xerxes presented by Aeschylus in “The Persians,” and many Spaniards of the 17th century likely accepted the image of the victory of the modern centralist state on the residual feudalist order offered by Lope de Vega in “Fuente Ovejuna.”

Posted in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , Comments closed

“I am Bondi’s Brother” – Irving Roth

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

Holocaust Theater: Representation or Misrepresentation

(This is a transcript of a speech given by Arnold Mittelman to Association of Holocaust Organizations on 1/10/12.) I wish to thank Bill Shulman, President of the Association of Holocaust Organizations, and member of the National Jewish Theater Foundation/Holocaust Theater Archive Advisory Board, for inviting me to make this presentation to you, his constituents, at […]

Posted in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , Comments closed

What the Survivor and Historian Know: Detente Between Those Who Lived the Shoah and Study It

Jeff Cohen’s “The Soap Myth,” as produced by the National Jewish Theater Foundation and directed by Arnold Mittleman, has brought to life on the New York stage the inherent tensions between Holocaust historians and Holocaust survivors over facts and interpretation of facts.

Posted in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , Comments closed

All About Jewish Theatre

The NJTF Holocaust Theater International Initiative wishes to recognize the Israel based website ALL ABOUT JEWISH THEATRE, Moti Sandak editor, for the development of their Holocaust Theatre On Line Collection. This publicly accessible compilation of articles, reviews and theatre works can be found at: All About Jewish Theatre

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed

The Aftermath of War: Second Generation Performance Art

Dr. Susan Jacobowitz Queensborough Community College The City University of New York A rock drops into the center of a pond. Ripples spread. Make that a flaming comet crashing into a boiling tar pit. A tidal wave ensues. Consider the Holocaust as that first event. Call the pit “Europe.” (“In the Beginning Was Auschwitz” B7) […]

Posted in UncategorizedComments closed