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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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
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 […]
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 […]
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.”
(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 […]
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.
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
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) […]
