Theatre as a Form of Resistance to Oppression and Genocide
How can theatre be used as a tool of resistance against oppression and genocide? On March 29, the Elie Wiesel Center welcomed Joshua Sobol to the Metcalf Trustee Center to help us find an answer to this question. Sobol, an Israeli playwright in residence at Israeli Stage, spoke to an audience filled with students, faculty, staff, community members, and theatre enthusiasts.
Sobol began the lecture by discussing his personal history and inspirations. Notably, he wrote a triptych of related plays about a Jewish ghetto in World War II that he found brought him closer to understanding the Holocaust and the role that theatre plays in a time of genocide. The plays are based on his research of the historical Vilna Ghetto, which established and ran a successful theatre during the Holocaust.
After “mass liquidations,” there were only 15,000 Jewish people remaining in the Vilna Ghetto. The head of the ghetto, Jacob Jens, believed the best possible way to halt further deportations and preserve the surviving population was to cultivate a productive work force that might be viewed as an asset to Germany. In order to this, he worked to normalize life in the ghetto by creating structures for a health system, education, and a judiciary. The residents even opened cultural sites, such as a library and the theatre.
The theatre was surprisingly popular during the eighteen months it operated. The space had 315 seats, which were oversold every evening. Sobol interviewed survivors from Vilna and found that the theatre was not successful despite the circumstances, but because of them. One interviewee said that, “When one is humiliated and debased every day, working forced labor, and living in over-populated quarters, the best thing to do was to put on their best clothing and go to the theatre.” An evening at the theatre restored “the feeling of being human” and a sense of community.
After the lecture, Sobol took questions from the audience, ranging from the role of resistance in contemporary American theatre and the state of theatre in Israel. A reception followed in which audience members were invited to mingle and discuss the evening’s topic.
You can view more images from the event at our Facebook.