From the Shtetl to the Stage

From the Shtetl to the Stage PDF Author: Alexander Granach
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351518410
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Alexander Granach, who died while he was acting on Broadway in 1945, brilliantly relates the remarkable story of his unlikely path from a poverty-stricken, rough-and-tumble childhood to success on the German stage. This is the account of a daring, curiosity-filled, and perceptive Jewish child from poor towns in Galicia who was seized with a passion for the theater when he saw his first show at the age of 14. He overcame great odds to become a leading stage and film actor in Weimar Germany - and he had to have both legs broken to do it! Born in what is now southern Ukraine, Granach began working at the age of six in his father's bakery, where his heavy tasks left him visibly knock-kneed. With very little formal education but open for adventure and willing to work hard, Alexander ran away several times, the last time to Berlin, at the age of 16, where his talent and charm won him a place in Max Reinhardt's theater school. His career was abruptly interrupted by World War I and his time as a prisoner of war in Italy, but after a daring escape and the end of the war he resumed his rise to prominence in German artistic life. A natural storyteller, Granach's autobiography captures equally the charms, adventures, and trials of his shtetl days, the horrors of trench warfare, and the glamour and excitement of the German theater before Hitler came to power.

From the Shtetl to the Stage

From the Shtetl to the Stage PDF Author: Alexander Granach
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351518410
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Get Book

Book Description
Alexander Granach, who died while he was acting on Broadway in 1945, brilliantly relates the remarkable story of his unlikely path from a poverty-stricken, rough-and-tumble childhood to success on the German stage. This is the account of a daring, curiosity-filled, and perceptive Jewish child from poor towns in Galicia who was seized with a passion for the theater when he saw his first show at the age of 14. He overcame great odds to become a leading stage and film actor in Weimar Germany - and he had to have both legs broken to do it! Born in what is now southern Ukraine, Granach began working at the age of six in his father's bakery, where his heavy tasks left him visibly knock-kneed. With very little formal education but open for adventure and willing to work hard, Alexander ran away several times, the last time to Berlin, at the age of 16, where his talent and charm won him a place in Max Reinhardt's theater school. His career was abruptly interrupted by World War I and his time as a prisoner of war in Italy, but after a daring escape and the end of the war he resumed his rise to prominence in German artistic life. A natural storyteller, Granach's autobiography captures equally the charms, adventures, and trials of his shtetl days, the horrors of trench warfare, and the glamour and excitement of the German theater before Hitler came to power.

From the Shtetl to the Stage

From the Shtetl to the Stage PDF Author: Alexander Granach
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351518402
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Alexander Granach, who died while he was acting on Broadway in 1945, brilliantly relates the remarkable story of his unlikely path from a poverty-stricken, rough-and-tumble childhood to success on the German stage. This is the account of a daring, curiosity-filled, and perceptive Jewish child from poor towns in Galicia who was seized with a passion for the theater when he saw his first show at the age of 14. He overcame great odds to become a leading stage and film actor in Weimar Germany - and he had to have both legs broken to do it! Born in what is now southern Ukraine, Granach began working at the age of six in his father's bakery, where his heavy tasks left him visibly knock-kneed. With very little formal education but open for adventure and willing to work hard, Alexander ran away several times, the last time to Berlin, at the age of 16, where his talent and charm won him a place in Max Reinhardt's theater school. His career was abruptly interrupted by World War I and his time as a prisoner of war in Italy, but after a daring escape and the end of the war he resumed his rise to prominence in German artistic life. A natural storyteller, Granach's autobiography captures equally the charms, adventures, and trials of his shtetl days, the horrors of trench warfare, and the glamour and excitement of the German theater before Hitler came to power.

The Golden Age Shtetl

The Golden Age Shtetl PDF Author: Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691168512
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
Neither a comprehensive history of Eastern European Jewish life or the shtetl, Petrovsky-Shtern, professor of Jewish Studies at Northwestern University, focuses on three provinces Volhynia, Podolia, and Kiev of the then Russian Empire during what he deems the golden age period, 1790 - 1840, when the shtetl was "the unique habitat of some 80 percent of East European Jews."

Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema

Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema PDF Author: Barbara Hales
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1789208734
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
The burgeoning film industry in the Weimar Republic was, among other things, a major site of German-Jewish experience, one that provided a sphere for Jewish “outsiders” to shape mainstream culture. The chapters collected in this volume deploy new historical, theoretical, and methodological approaches to understanding the significant involvement of German Jews in Weimar cinema. Reflecting upon different conceptions of Jewishness – as religion, ethnicity, social role, cultural code, or text – these studies offer a wide-ranging exploration of an often overlooked aspect of German film history.

Out of the Shtetl

Out of the Shtetl PDF Author: Nancy Sinkoff
Publisher: Society of Biblical Lit
ISBN: 193067516X
Category : Hasidism
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description


Echoes of the Holocaust on the American Musical Stage

Echoes of the Holocaust on the American Musical Stage PDF Author: Jessica Hillman
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786492686
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
With chapters on The Sound of Music, Milk and Honey, Fiddler on the Roof, Cabaret, The Rothschilds, Rags, Ragtime and The Producers, this book examines both direct and indirect references to, or resonances of, the Holocaust, tracing changing American attitudes through the chronological progression of these musical productions and their subsequent revivals. Despite the abundance of writing on both musical theatre history and on the difficulties of Holocaust representation, history and theatre scholars alike have thus far ignored the intersections of these areas. The academy thereby risks excluding precisely those works that shed the most light on our culture's evolving response to the Shoah, an event that still helps to define American identity. This book redresses this lapse by focusing on the theatrical form seen by the greatest amount of people--musicals--which either trigger or reflect changing American mores.

Tales from the Shtetl

Tales from the Shtetl PDF Author: Aviva Ravel
Publisher: Pioneer Drama Service, Inc.
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Book Description


Mazel

Mazel PDF Author: Rebecca Goldstein
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299181246
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Mazel means luck in Yiddish, and luck is the guiding force in this magical and mesmerizing novel that spans three generations. Sasha Saunders is the daughter of a Polish rabbi who abandons the shtetl and wins renown as a Yiddish actress in Warsaw and New York. Her daughter Chloe becomes a professor of classics at Columbia. Chloe's daughter Phoebe grows up to become a mathematician who is drawn to traditional Judaism and the sort of domestic life her mother and grandmother rejected.

In the Shadow of the Shtetl

In the Shadow of the Shtetl PDF Author: Jeffrey Veidlinger
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253011523
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
A history based on interviews with hundreds of Ukrainian Jews who survived both Hitler and Stalin, recounting experiences ordinary and extraordinary. The story of how the Holocaust decimated Jewish life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe is well known. Still, thousands of Jews in these small towns survived the war and returned afterward to rebuild their communities. The recollections of some four hundred returnees in Ukraine provide the basis for Jeffrey Veidlinger’s reappraisal of the traditional narrative of twentieth-century Jewish history. These elderly Yiddish speakers relate their memories of Jewish life in the prewar shtetl, their stories of survival during the Holocaust, and their experiences living as Jews under Communism. Despite Stalinist repressions, the Holocaust, and official antisemitism, their individual remembrances of family life, religious observance, education, and work testify to the survival of Jewish life in the shadow of the shtetl to this day.

Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage

Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage PDF Author: Joel Berkowitz
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814335047
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
Collects leading scholars' insight on the plays, production, music, audiences, and political and aesthetic concerns of modern Yiddish theater. While Yiddish theater is best known as popular entertainment, it has been shaped by its creators' responses to changing social and political conditions. Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage: Essays in Drama, Performance, and Show Business showcases the diversity of modern Yiddish theater by focusing on the relentless and far-ranging capacity of its performers, producers, critics, and audiences for self-invention. Editors Joel Berkowitz and Barbara Henry have assembled essays from leading scholars that trace the roots of modern Yiddish drama and performance in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe and span a century and a half and three continents, beyond the heyday of a Yiddish stage that was nearly eradicated by the Holocaust, to its post-war life in Western Europe and Israel. Each chapter takes its own distinct approach to its subject and is accompanied by an appendix consisting of primary material, much of it available in English translation for the first time, to enrich readers' appreciation of the issues explored and also to serve as supplementary classroom texts. Chapters explore Yiddish theater across a broad geographical span--from Poland and Russia to France, the United States, Argentina, and Israel and Palestine. Readers will spend time with notable individuals and troupes; meet creators, critics, and audiences; sample different dramatic genres; and learn about issues that preoccupied both artists and audiences. The final section presents an extensive bibliography of book-length works and scholarly articles on Yiddish drama and theater, the most comprehensive resource of its kind. Collectively these essays illuminate the modern Yiddish stage as a phenomenon that was constantly reinventing itself and simultaneously examining and questioning that very process. Scholars of Jewish performance and those interested in theater history will appreciate this wide-ranging volume.