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(JTA) — Jewish tales have had prime billing on Broadway this season — and Jewish audiences have been flocking to the theater.
Audiences have lined as much as see Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt,” the multigenerational saga of a Jewish household in Vienna, and the devastating penalties of the Holocaust upon its ranks. They’ve packed the home for “Parade,” a musical retelling of the notorious antisemitic present trial and subsequent lynching of Leo Frank in Marietta, Georgia, in 1915. And simply off Broadway, “The Wanderers” (which closed April 2) invited us into the slowly disintegrating marriage of two secular Jews born to moms who dramatically left the Satmar sect of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, a present replete with intergenerational trauma and a pervasive sense of ennui.
None of those reveals affords a very lighthearted night on the theater. So why have they confirmed so fashionable? Critics have penned numerous evaluations of the three performs, analyzing the standard of the productions, the scripts, scores, performances of principal actors, set and design. However for our new ebook exploring what audiences find out about Judaism from Jewish cultural arts, my colleague Sharon Avni and I’ve been interviewing viewers members after seeing “Leopoldstadt,” “Parade” and “The Wanderers.” We’re eager about turning the highlight away from the stage and onto the seats: What do audiences make of all this? What do they be taught?
Take “Leopoldstadt,” for instance, a drama so stuffed with characters that when it left London for its Broadway run the manufacturing crew added a household tree to the Playbill in order that theatergoers may comply with alongside. “Leopoldstadt” affords its viewers a whistle-stop introduction to trendy European Jewish historical past. In considerably pedantic style, the household debates problems with the day that embody Zionism, artwork, philosophy, intermarriage and, in a searing ultimate scene, the reminiscence of the Holocaust.
For a few of the theatergoers that we interviewed, “Leopoldstadt” was highly effective exactly as a result of it packed a lot Jewish historical past into its two-hour run time. It provided a primary literacy course in European Judaism, one they thought everybody wanted to be taught. Others, nevertheless, thought that this primer of Jewish historical past was actually written for novice audiences — maybe non-Jews, or assimilated Jews with half-remembered Jewish heritage, like Stoppard himself. “I don’t know who this play is for,” one interviewee advised us. “However it’s not me. I do know all this already.”
Brandon Uranowitz, left, who performs a Holocaust survivor, confronts Arty Froushan as a younger author discovering his Jewish roots, within the Broadway manufacturing of Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt.” (Joan Marcus)
Different interviewees thought the ability of “Leopoldstadt” lay not in its historical past classes, however in its means to make use of the previous to light up up to date realities. I spoke at size with a girl who had been battling antisemitism at work. A few of her colleagues had been sharing social media posts stuffed with lazy caricatures of Jews as avaricious capitalists. Upon seeing “Leopoldstadt,” she realized that these vile messages mirrored Nazi rhetoric within the Nineteen Thirties, convincing her that antisemitism in up to date America had reached simply as harmful a threshold as beheld European Jews on the eve of the Shoah.
We heard comparable sentiments concerning the prescience of historical past to alert us to the specter of antisemitism at this time from audiences who noticed “Parade.” Recalling a scene the place the solid members wave Accomplice flags through the titular parade celebrating Accomplice Memorial Day, Jewish audiences recalled feeling particularly attuned to Jewish precarity when the theater burst into applause on the finish of the musical quantity. “Why have been we clapping Accomplice flags?” certainly one of our interviewees mentioned. “I’ve lived within the South, and as a Jew I do know that once you see Accomplice flags it isn’t a secure area for us.”
“Parade” dramatizes the favored frenzy that surrounded the trial of Leo Frank, a Yankee in addition to a Jew, who was scapegoated for the homicide of a younger Southern lady. Jewish viewers members that we interviewed advised us that the play powerfully illustrated how crowds may very well be manipulated into demonizing minorities, evaluating the scenario in early twentieth century Marietta to the alt-right of at this time, and the rise of antisemitism in up to date America.
What we in the end found, nevertheless, was that viewers perceptions of the Jewish themes and characters in these productions have been as diverse as audiences themselves. Inevitably, they inform us extra concerning the particular person than the efficiency. But the truth that American Jews have flocked to those three reveals — a secular pilgrimage of types — additionally illustrates the ability and the peril of public Jewish storytelling. For viewers members at “Leopoldstadt” and “Parade,” particularly, attending these performances was not merely an entertaining night on the theater. It was a type of witnessing. There was little or no to be stunned by in these performs, in any case. The inevitable occurs: The Holocaust destroys Jewish life in Europe, Leo Frank is convicted and lynched. Jewish audiences know to anticipate this. They know there will probably be no blissful ending. Within the secular cultural equal to saying Kaddish for the useless, Jewish audiences carry out their respect to Jewish reminiscence by displaying up, and by paying a whole lot of {dollars} for the great seats.
The peril of those performances, nevertheless, is that audiences be taught little about antisemitism in actuality. The victims of the Nazis and the Southern Jews of Marietta would inform us that they may by no means have predicted what was to occur. But in “Parade” and “Leopoldstadt” audiences are requested to grapple with the naivete of characters who consider that all the things will probably be all proper, whilst audiences themselves know that it’ll not. By studying Jewish historical past on Broadway, audiences are paradoxically capable of distance themselves from it, just by realizing an excessive amount of.
Within the ultimate scene of “Leopoldstadt,” Leo, the character loosely based mostly on Stoppard himself, is berated by a long-lost relative for his ignorance of his household’s story. “You reside as if with out historical past,” the relative tells Leo. “As if you happen to throw no shadow behind you.” Audiences, at that second, are invited to pat themselves on the again for coming to see the present, and for selecting to acknowledge the shadows of their very own Jewish histories. The chilly onerous actuality, nevertheless, is {that a} shadow can solely ever be a fuzzy define of the reality.
is an assistant professor within the Division of Spiritual Research at Michigan State College. She is the writer of “Jewish Sunday Faculties: Instructing Faith in Nineteenth Century America” (NYU Press, 2023).
The views and opinions expressed on this article are these of the writer and don’t essentially mirror the views of JTA or its guardian firm, 70 Faces Media.
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