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Acting out trauma in the Theatre of Embarassment: George Tabori's Shylock Improvisations

Research Output:
Contribution to journal
Article
 Peer-review

Abstract

In 1978 Jewish-Hungarian director and playwright George Tabori created a performance with the elaborate title I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear: Improvisations on Shakespeare's Shylock. Based on Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, the piece, produced by the Munich Kammerspiele, was performed in a former boiler room in a cellar by a cast of twelve actors and a musician. Tabori framed his adaptation as therapeutic memory-work, as a personal and collective attempt to come to terms with the trauma of the Holocaust in post-war (West) Germany. The inclusion of Tabori's Shylock Improvisations in many academic works that consider the play in performance confirms the seminal status it has acquired in the production history of the play. (Bulman

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output:
Contribution to journal
Article
 Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 142-152

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Performance Research (Volume 16, Issue 1)

Publication milestones

  • Published - 16/03/2011

Publication status

Published - 16/03/2011

ISSN

1352-8165

Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/224521
  • Scopus: 79953058091

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