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...
The Investigation [Die Ermittlung]
Author(s): Peter Weiss
Weiss uses transcripts from the Frankfurt trials of Auschwitz SS guards to create his docudrama. However, the play is not an actual documentary and some of his decisions in shaping the material have been highly controversial. Weiss structures the testimony into verse, never gives the survivors testifying names just numbers (as they were given in the camp), and never mentions Jews. Weiss uses the play to argue that the Holocaust occurred because of capitalism and suggests that the oppressed could as easily become oppressors.
Format: Docudrama
Cast Size:28M/2F
Notes:
For additional reading, see Gene A. Plunka, Holocaust Drama: The Theater of Atrocity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 114–131.
Snapshot
Original or Prominent Production:
Commissioned and produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, 1965–66, directed by Peter Brook; Young Vic Theatre, London, 2007 (Adapted by Jean Baudrillard)
Commissioned and produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, 1965–66, directed by Peter Brook; Young Vic Theatre, London, 2007 (Adapted by Jean Baudrillard)
Nationality of Author: German
Original Language: German
Publisher:
Dramatic Publishing
Marion Boyars (backlist)
Production Rights Holder:
Experience(s) Chronicled: Concentration and Extermination Camps | Perpetrators, Bystanders and Collaborators | Survivors and Subsequent Generations
HTC Insights
Views, reference and research of interest.
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.
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