On Guilt and Ghosts
Ruthie Abeliovich
rabeliovi@univ.haifa.ac.ilUniversity of Haifa (Israel)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4121-9693
Abstract
This paper reviews Grzegorz Niziołek thought-provoking book The Polish Theatre of the Holocaust (London: Methuen Drama Press, 2019), and the key questions and issues it addresses. Focusing on Polish perspectives, theatrical representations and performative reactions to the extermination of the Jews during WWII, the book analyzes six decades of theatrical creation. Within this scheme, the victims and perpetrators are casted in the role of actors, while the Polish people are allotted the role of passive spectators, witnesses to the atrocity. This review sheds light on the ethical and aesthetical implications of Niziołek’s study, by attending to the material aspects of the catastrophe, and its theatrical representations. It seeks to recuperate and integrate the Jewish perspective into the theatrical analysis.
Keywords:
Polish theater after 1945, Holocaust, Shoah, Dybbuk, Szymon An-skyReferences
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Authors
Ruthie Abeliovichrabeliovi@univ.haifa.ac.il
University of Haifa Israel
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4121-9693
Ruthie Abeliovich is a theatre historian based in the University of Haifa, Israel. She is the author of Possessed Voices: Aural Remains from Modernist Hebrew Theatre (SUNY Press, 2019), and co-editor of A Stage of Their Own: 7 American Feminist Plays (Hebrew), and co-editor of Borderlines: Essays on Maps and The Logic of Place (De Gruyter, 2019). Her articles have appeared in the journals TDR, Journal of Classical Sociology, Theatre Research International, Theatre Journal, and Performance Research. Her new research project "Yiddish Popular Theatre 1880-1920: Performance as knowledge," received funding (2021-2025), from the European Research Council (ERC).
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