1st Edition
Holocaust Theater Dramatizing Survivor Trauma and its Effects on the Second Generation
Facts about the Holocaust are one way of learning about its devastating impact, but presenting personal manifestations of trauma can be more effective than citing statistics.
Holocaust Theater addresses a selection of contemporary plays about the Holocaust, examining how collective and individual trauma is represented in dramatic texts, and considering the ways in which spectators might be swayed viscerally, intellectually, and emotionally by witnessing such representations onstage. Drawing on interviews with a number of the playwrights alongside psychoanalytic studies of survivor trauma, this volume seeks to foster understanding of the traumatic effects of the Holocaust on subsequent generations.
Holocaust Theater offers a vital account of theater’s capacity to represent the effects of Holocaust trauma.
1: Introduction
2: The Spectre of the Holocaust Among Survivors
3: Staging Survivor Guilt
4: Staging Childhood Survivor Trauma
5: Symptoms of Psychological Problems Among Children of Survivors
6: Aggressive Behavior Among Offspring of Holocaust Survivors
Coda
Bibliography
Biography
Gene A. Plunka is a Professor in the English Department at the University of Memphis.