Overview

A meticulously researched book that collects sixteen playscripts written by European Jews imprisoned in the Terezín ghetto in the Czech Republic during the Holocaust.   The concentration camp and Jewish ghetto at Terezín, or Theresienstadt, in what is now the Czech Republic, was a site of enormous suffering, fear, and death. But amid this horrific period, there was also a thriving and desperately vibrant cultural life. While the children’s drawings and musical pieces created in the ghetto have become justly famous, the prisoners’ theatrical works, though a lesser-known aspect of their artistic endeavors, deserves serious attention as well.   Performing Captivity, Performing Escape collects eleven theatrical texts—cabaret songs and sketches, historical and verse dramas, puppet plays, and a Purim play—written by Czech and Austrian Jews. Together these works reveal the wide range of ways in which the prisoners engaged with and escaped from life in the ghetto through performance. The anthology opens with an insightful prologue by novelist Ivan Klíma, who was interned in the ghetto as a child and contains a detailed introduction by editor Lisa Peschel about the pre-war theatrical influences and wartime conditions that inspired the theater of the ghetto. The array of theatrical forms collected in this anthology speaks of the prisoners’ persistence of hope in a harrowing time and will be a moving read for students and scholars of the Holocaust.  

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9781803092027

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Reviews

“Performing Captivity, Performing Escape is a fascinating, heartbreaking, frequently witty collection that has been translated with love and care, and that brings to light art that has heretofore been hidden. When you add the essays, thorough biographical notes, and beautiful, evocative artwork, you end up with a powerful portrait of a tragic era in Central European history and of the power of art to ameliorate suffering.”—Austrian Studies Newsmagazine   “Performing Captivity, Performing Escape is a fascinating, heartbreaking, frequently witty collection that has been translated with love and care, and that brings to light art that has heretofore been hidden. When you add the essays, thorough biographical notes, and beautiful, evocative artwork, you end up with a powerful portrait of a tragic era in Central European history and of the power of art to ameliorate suffering.” * Austrian Studies Newsmagazine *

Performing Captivity, Performing Escape is a fascinating, heartbreaking, frequently witty collection that has been translated with love and care, and that brings to light art that has heretofore been hidden. When you add the essays, thorough biographical notes, and beautiful, evocative artwork, you end up with a powerful portrait of a tragic era in Central European history and of the power of art to ameliorate suffering. -Austrian Studies Newsmagazine Performing Captivity, Performing Escape is a fascinating, heartbreaking, frequently witty collection that has been translated with love and care, and that brings to light art that has heretofore been hidden. When you add the essays, thorough biographical notes, and beautiful, evocative artwork, you end up with a powerful portrait of a tragic era in Central European history and of the power of art to ameliorate suffering. * Austrian Studies Newsmagazine *

Author Information

Lisa Peschel is a senior lecturer in theater at the School of Arts and Creative Technologies, University of York, England. She is the coeditor of Performing (for) Survival and the editor of A Holocaust Cabaret.  

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