Playwright's 'Holocaust comedy' (hear her out!) making NYC debut

[IlanaKeller]

Thought you guys might find this of interest. A New Jersey playwright's "Holocaust comedy" is making its NYC debut in the Midtown International Theatre Festival. Check out how she came to that unlikely pairing (she admits it sounds horrific!) and how it raised $25,000 for a Jewish foundation, and let me know what you think.

Shore playwright's 'Warmth' makes NYC debut 

 

[HopesS]

Surly there a better topics then millions of people dying to make as laugh

 

 

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[BroadwayConcierge]

Pass. There are some things you just don't do.

[sabrelady]

It is my confirmed belief that the  systemic horrific torture and deaths of the millions of victims should never be reduced to a mere entertainment.  You diminish them and yourself. 

[Wee Thomas2]

HopesS said: "Surly there a better topics then millions of people dying to make as laugh

 

 

"

Hogan's Heroes lasted many years in syndication and spawned one of my favorite posters' names here.

 

 

"

 

[wexy]

Just as an aside my father survived Auschwitz, Dachau and the Flossenburg Death March. A couple years before he died I dropped him off at a bank in Boca Raton. He came back and told me two younger guys in front of him talked in German. My Dad was fluent in German and struck up a  conversation with them told them about the camps he was in. One of the men told him that he had an uncle at Dachau.

"Dad", I said, "Was he one of us or was he working?"  He laughed and said "That's a good question."

 

 

 

 

[perfectlymarvelous]

Humor has always been part of tragedy...it's a way to deal. That said, it doesn't really sit well with me that the playwright is not Jewish. 

[BroadwayConcierge]

I'm Jewish and I would never, ever in my LIFE expound upon this topic with "comedy" even close to my brain.

[Dancingthrulife2]

perfectlymarvelous said: "Humor has always been part of tragedy...it's a way to deal. That said, it doesn't really sit well with me that the playwright is not Jewish. 

 

"

Yet many Asian stories were written by white people, and some like The King and I have become classic despite its debatably biased depictions. I don't see how ethnicity matters in terms of the process of playwriting. A well-researched play by a non-Jewish playwright is just as, probably more, effective. Moreover, the story is not only a Jewish story, but one that belongs to all human beings for its exposition of the cruelty of humanity and the courage and love when being imposed of such situations.

[WhizzerMarvin]

One of my favorite movies of all time, Life is Beautiful, is largely a (romantic) comedy set in Italy during the start of WWII and later in a concentration camp. A father uses humor to cloak the horrors going on inside the camp, enabling his young son to process the experience as a game and to survive. It's one of the most beautiful stories I've seen told on screen and often very funny too!

I think it takes a rare talent and vision to make something like this work, but it can be extremely effective when done well.  

[IlanaKeller]

Dancingthrulife2 said: "A well-researched play by a non-Jewish playwright is just as, probably more, effective. Moreover, the story is not only a Jewish story, but one that belongs to all human beings for its exposition of the cruelty of humanity and the courage and love when being imposed of such situations."

 

I think one other aspect of note is that she mentioned she wanted the story to feel authentic, and in the larger scheme, deals with "Catholic guilt" about the Holocaust, particularly a generation or two removed. As a semi-autobiographical work, that isn't something that could be authentically written by a Jewish person, necessarily. 

 

 

 

[henrikegerman]

Whizzer beat me to it in mentioning Life is Beautiful.  I share his great admiration for the movie.  Though, it should be noted, a great many objected to it (in my opinion myopically) for reasons similar to those offered in this thread.  

In addition, though, to Life is Beautiful, there is another much loved and much acclaimed comedy which took on Nazism and Jewish persecution, Chaplin's The Great Dictator.

[GavestonPS]

I have rarely laughed and cried so hard, or sat spellbound in such horror, as I did at the Mark Taper Forum's performance of GHETTO, by Joshua Sobel, translation by others plus English lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. (Sobel is Israeli, I believe, and we all know Harnick's fondness for Jewish subject matter. The score consisted of songs actually sung in the Vilna ghetto in the early 1940s (only translated into English, obviously.)) The play won awards in Israel and in the West End and closed quickly on Broadway, which was a shame.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto_(play)

 

Not only is GHETTO about the Holocaust, specifically Yiddish performers in the Jewish ghetto in Vilna, it is about Jewish complicity in the Holocaust, about ghetto leaders who made deals to provide the Germans with the sick and frail in order to save ghetto residents who seemed hardier. (The play judges such deals very harshly, but presents them as human ethical errors. I don't mean to say Sobel suggests Jews are specially apt to such errors.)

Humor is a matter of point of view and isn't necessarily "happy" or "approving" or "palliative". Humor can be biting and bitter. People even wrote comedies about AIDS at the height of the dying. In fact, I think there's this revival I heard about...