"Yiddish Theatre in Interwar Paris: The Staging of Jewishness"
Tue, December 17, 3:30 to 5:00pm EST (3:30 to 5:00pm EST), Virtual Zoom Room 12Abstract
This paper addresses the question “What makes Yiddish theatre Jewish?” by looking at how Yiddish theatre, when it is torn off from its Eastern roots, articulates and conveys Jewishness (Yidishkeyt) in a Western metropolitan context – interwar Paris – and how it enters into a socio-cultural dialogue with French theatrical genres, norms and traditions. It also illuminates the hitherto unrecognized scale of this medium in the cultural landscape of the City of Light – a significant gap in scholarly discourse that this research endeavors to fill.
I argue that, as a crucial transnational and diasporic platform, dramatizing the cultural identity of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe and dynamically interacting with the French theatrical milieu, Yiddish theatre operated not only as an institution reflecting and shaping cultural narratives, but also as a pivotal communal space for self-expression and self-fashioning amidst the complexities of diaspora life. The diverse audience receptions it generated further underline its role in fostering social cohesion and reflecting the multifaceted nature of Jewish ethnicity, allowing a community to assert its identity, engage in dialogue with the host society's cultural norms, and preserve its unique cultural foothold in a foreign but interconnected world.
The interdisciplinary methodology drawn upon is grounded in extensive primary sources including press articles, critiques and ads, playbills, scripts, posters, iconography, alongside secondary sources of scholarly analyses. It utilizes a combination of qualitative methods such as textual analysis and performance studies, to examine the agents, repertoire, dramaturgy, and theatrical conventions of Yiddish theatre.
Originating from a doctoral thesis successully defended in December 2023, this contribution will focus on the distinct characteristics of Yiddish theatre, its negotiation of minority identity in dispersion, and its essential role in revitalizing both individual and collective memory. As its findings contribute to the broader discourse on cultural interplay and the resilience of identity in the face of socio-political shifts, it holds relevance for scholars interested in Yiddish (and Jewish) Studies, Theatre and Performance Studies, as well as diaspora, migration and Jewish Cultural Studies or, more generally, Jewish (theatre) history.