Table of Contents (PDF)

Table of Contents (PDF)

Table of Contents (PDF)

Front cover:
 

Cover Design:Tali Niv Dolinsky
 

Cover Photograph:Adam Berg, Radix, Matrix, 1998 (detail)

Table of Contents (PDF)

"A new cultural phenomenon...."

Theatre has, since the time of the Jewish Enlightenment, served the secular community in its conflict with the religious. This book surveys the secular-religious rift and then describes the enhanced concern of the secular community in Israel for its own Jewishness and its expression in the theatre - especially following the 1967 War. It then moves on to a specific study of the play Bruria and finally reviews the phenomenon of the return to Orthodox Judaism by secular individuals.

Series Information: Routledge Harwood Contemporary Theatre Studies

Table of Contents (PDF)

Collective identities grow from a sense of the past, and the theatre very forcefully participates in the ongoing representations of and debates about the past, sometimes by contesting them and sometimes by reinforcing them. In his examination of the ways in which the theatre after World War II has presented different aspects of the French Revolution and the Holocaust, Freddie Rokem shows us that by "performing history" actors - as witnesses for the departed witnesses - bring the historical past and the theatrical present together.
 

Rokem analyzes the significance of stage representations of the French Revolution and the Holocaust in different national contexts: the United States and Europe for performances about the French Revolution and Israel for performances about the Holocaust. By pointing out both the great diversity and the common features of these performances, he draws attention to the complex collective efforts and the creativity of playwrights, directors, designers, and actors as they connect their theatrical energies to a specific historical past. He also focuses on the ways in which audiences in different cultures have been affected by and even had an influence on the ideological debates embedded in these performances. 
 

Performing History discusses plays and performances by Yehoshua Sobol, Dudu Ma'ayan, and Hanoch Levin in Israel; Peter Brook, Ariane Mnouchkine, and Ingmar Bergman in Europe; and Orson Welles, Herbert Blau, and Robert Wilson in the United States. Drawing upon these and upon his own life in Europe, Israel, and the United States, Rokem makes us aware of the critical interaction between the failures of history and the efforts to create viable and meaningful works of art.
 

Freddie Rokem is professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at Tel Aviv University and author of Tradition and Renewal: Swedish Drama and Theatre, I9I4-I922 and Theatrical Space in Ibsen, Chekhov, and Strindberg: Public Forms of Privacy.