Performing the Shoah
‘The theatre itself is increasingly being positioned as a place, or medium, with a particular ability to witness and to produce others as witnesses'
Many attempts have been made to represent the Holocaust in theatre across the years, to varying success. Films such as Schindler’s List and La vita è bella popularised the topic, without demanding anything from their audiences, intellectually or ethically. So far, only Claude Lanzmann’s epic 9 ½ hour film Shoah (1985) has shaped itself around the necessity of creating new generations of witnesses to the reality and magnitude of the Shoah, and it does this primarily by giving precedence to oral testimony, which is then juxtaposed with long passages of silence coupled with panning shots of desolate land, the sites (or ‘non-sites’) of memory.
In an essay on Shoah, Professor Robert Skloot, an accomplished director and academic, who compiled the groundbreaking studies of the theatre of the Holocaust (The Theatre of the Holocaust (1982-1999); The Darkness We Carry (1988) extended what I took to be an invitation to theatre makers:
'I have long thought about, but never had the courage to attempt, readings with actors using the transcribed texts of Holocaust survivors; that is, of continuing the life of survivors by performing their broken, heartbreaking testimonies as pieces of theatre. At the least, this kind of presentation would highlight the “paradox of acting” and complicate the ethical assumptions that have inhered in discussions of performance.'
The notion of performing testimony has a double meaning. By its very nature, testimony is inherently performative insofar as it acts upon those who hear it; against the spectator’s wishes, they have been transformed into a witness. By re-performing these testimonies, we can carry on the task that was of utmost importance to those who survived the Shoah: to tell the world what the Nazis had done, and, in the words of Primo Levi, to make those who were not there ‘participants’ in the testimony. As Caroline Wake notes, ‘[t]he theatre itself is increasingly being positioned as a place, or medium, with a particular ability to witness and to produce others as witnesses’, thus making the theatrical enactment of testimony an exceptionally powerful tool, perhaps more so than literary testimony.
It is our intention to gather a group of actors and a dramaturge, and expose them to various items of Holocaust representation, such as Primo Levi’s If This is a Man, Elie Wiesel’s Night, and, perhaps most importantly, the film and text of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah. Performers will then be asked to write or devise a piece of theatre/performance art/music that encapsulates their response to the work shown. For the first few sessions, we will be concentrating simply on exposing the group to a variety of artistic and critical material, and exploring the reactions to these. The music produced and performed in Terezin will also be a valuable stimulus. From these reactions and responses, the dramaturge, Rebecca and I will fashion a piece of theatre that functions as a stand-alone piece, requiring no prior knowledge of the Holocaust in order to be intellectually, emotionally, narratively and ethically engaging. This piece of theatre will be composed of the performers’ responses, and the performance of verbatim pieces of testimony, both held together by the narrative thread of the company’s attempts at representation and the difficulties we face in encountering this material.
The most important thing to stress at this point is that this will not be a play about the Holocaust; it will be a piece of theatre about the difficulties of Holocaust representation, and about how we respond to the Holocaust nowadays, and what it means to our generation. This could then shed new light on how it is that we respond to other more contemporary disasters and genocides, although that would be an added bonus, rather than the main focus.
In an essay on Shoah, Professor Robert Skloot, an accomplished director and academic, who compiled the groundbreaking studies of the theatre of the Holocaust (The Theatre of the Holocaust (1982-1999); The Darkness We Carry (1988) extended what I took to be an invitation to theatre makers:
'I have long thought about, but never had the courage to attempt, readings with actors using the transcribed texts of Holocaust survivors; that is, of continuing the life of survivors by performing their broken, heartbreaking testimonies as pieces of theatre. At the least, this kind of presentation would highlight the “paradox of acting” and complicate the ethical assumptions that have inhered in discussions of performance.'
The notion of performing testimony has a double meaning. By its very nature, testimony is inherently performative insofar as it acts upon those who hear it; against the spectator’s wishes, they have been transformed into a witness. By re-performing these testimonies, we can carry on the task that was of utmost importance to those who survived the Shoah: to tell the world what the Nazis had done, and, in the words of Primo Levi, to make those who were not there ‘participants’ in the testimony. As Caroline Wake notes, ‘[t]he theatre itself is increasingly being positioned as a place, or medium, with a particular ability to witness and to produce others as witnesses’, thus making the theatrical enactment of testimony an exceptionally powerful tool, perhaps more so than literary testimony.
It is our intention to gather a group of actors and a dramaturge, and expose them to various items of Holocaust representation, such as Primo Levi’s If This is a Man, Elie Wiesel’s Night, and, perhaps most importantly, the film and text of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah. Performers will then be asked to write or devise a piece of theatre/performance art/music that encapsulates their response to the work shown. For the first few sessions, we will be concentrating simply on exposing the group to a variety of artistic and critical material, and exploring the reactions to these. The music produced and performed in Terezin will also be a valuable stimulus. From these reactions and responses, the dramaturge, Rebecca and I will fashion a piece of theatre that functions as a stand-alone piece, requiring no prior knowledge of the Holocaust in order to be intellectually, emotionally, narratively and ethically engaging. This piece of theatre will be composed of the performers’ responses, and the performance of verbatim pieces of testimony, both held together by the narrative thread of the company’s attempts at representation and the difficulties we face in encountering this material.
The most important thing to stress at this point is that this will not be a play about the Holocaust; it will be a piece of theatre about the difficulties of Holocaust representation, and about how we respond to the Holocaust nowadays, and what it means to our generation. This could then shed new light on how it is that we respond to other more contemporary disasters and genocides, although that would be an added bonus, rather than the main focus.