Playing the unplayable
Celebrated German director and actor Harry Fuhrmann comes to New Zealand especially to direct a selection of scenes from stirring and relevant plays that give us a just a glimpse into Jewish life in Germany during WWII. See our second year actors workshop contrasting scenes from 3 different plays, that paint very vivid and moving accounts of life in Germany during the war. Harry Fuhrmann is an expert in this field so the workshop is bound to be a stirring and enlightening event.
The scenes are from these 3 contrasting plays:
The Investigation by Peter Weiss (best known for Marat/Sade), is a documentary drama of the Frankfurt trials of 1963-65. In Frankfurt it was the German government itself that held the trial, focusing on the crimes perpetrated at Auschwitz. (First performed 1965)
Ghetto is the story of the Vilna ghetto theatre, during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania. Written by the Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol, Ghetto was inspired by an actual historical theatre which operated in the Jewish ghetto from 1941 until 1943. The Vilna Ghetto theatre responded to despair with song, satire, and - amazingly - criticism of the Nazi regime, proving that theatre can provide courage and hope even amidst atrocity.
The inception of George Tabori's first Holocaust play, The Cannibals (1974), lay in his desire to cope with his father's murder at Auschwitz 25 years earlier. Tabori subverted certain conventions of traditional narrative form through Brechtian techniques, while at the same time he created a traditional hero based on his father, Cornelius.
Although the play's premise is serious, Tabori uses absurdist elements such as black humour, song, and dance, along with hints of Samuel Beckett and Franz Kafka to add more depth to the impact of the play; to shock and confront his audience. He believed that sentimentality is an insult to the dead because "the event is beyond all tears” .
| Where: | Te Whaea: National Dance & Drama Centre, 11 Hutchison Road, Newtown, Wellington |
| When: | Thu 11 – Sat 13 March 7pm |
| Price: | $8 |
| Bookings: | ONLINE CLICK HERE |
