Emerging from the Ashes

The fragmented text is from the program notes of Arbeit machtfrei vom Toitland Europa, an extraordinary event performed in Berlin as part of the Jewish Cultural Life Festival.' The Akko Theatre Center consists of a group of second-generation Israelis whose Arbeit macht frei attempts to come to terms with the post-Holocaust trauma of their parents, as well as their own upbringing in Israel-a state founded on the ruins of catastrophe-as theatre founder and director, David Mayaan puts it.2 Since 1991, the small troupe of five dedicated actors (who have no sponsors, no state subsidies, and often no salaries) lead Akko theatre visitors three to four times a week on a six-hour journey through the Holocaust past and Israeli present.3 Mayaan believes that the influence of mass media has so weakened the theatre experience that spectators respond much more readily to everyday street interactions and TV than to staged theatre. So, in a kind of living film that discards traditional theatre conventions, the director involves his audiences both with theatricalized space and the highly emotional content of the Holocaust

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Jewish state · Judaism · Literature · Media studies · Political science · Political theatre · Sociology · State (computer science · The Holocaust · Theatre director · Visual arts · Cinema and Media Studies · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Theatre and Performance Studies

• The Drowned and the Saved

  Primo Levi•Holocaust•2003

  Add to list