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...
Dancing on a Volcano: A Berlin Kabarett
Author(s): Angelina Réaux
Angelina Réaux, actress and classical singer, created A Berlin Kabarett with music by composers who were either lost in the Holocaust, forced into exile, or silenced by the Nazis. Réaux, together with Dr. Alan Lareau, an expert on Berlin cabaret and professor of German at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, undertook painstaking research all over Europe to uncover these songs, which they eventually discovered in the form of old sheet music and manuscripts hidden in publisher archives, Berlin libraries, and family attics. Originally performed in Berlin clubs before the outbreak of World War II, kabarett was a way to express anti-Third Reich sentiment and became an enormously popular form of entertainment. The majority of German cabaret music was destroyed by the Nazis, but the surviving songs are brought to life by Réaux in her cabaret performance.
Format: Cabaret
Cast Size:1F
Snapshot
Original or Prominent Production:
Created for the New York Philharmonic’s Weimar Berlin Festival in 1994–95. Performed at the Royal George Theatre in Chicago, April 1998.
Created for the New York Philharmonic’s Weimar Berlin Festival in 1994–95. Performed at the Royal George Theatre in Chicago, April 1998.
Original Source Material: Music by composers such as Hanns Eisler, Alexander Zemlinsky, and Kurt Weill.
Nationality of Author: U.S.
Original Language: Songs performed in English and German.
Experience(s) Chronicled: European Jewry Before the Holocaust | Germany, Hitler and the Growth of Nazism
HTC Insights
Views, reference and research of interest.
Lifetime Achievement Award
The National Jewish Theater Foundation presented its 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award to Alfred Uhry. The presentation took place as part of the Lincoln Center Library event on January 27th 2025 in commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on the 80th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz
Lifetime Achievement Award
On September 30, 2024, French playwright, Mr. Jean Claude Grumberg received the Lifetime Achievement Award. It was presented by NJTF HTII President, Arnold Mittelman with Dominique Trimbur, PhD-Manager for the History of Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, Teaching of the Holocaust of Fondation Pour La Memoir de la Shoah Project.