Theater as "play and mirror mode" of Jewish experience

The book explores the function of theater for the Jewish experience of Modernity. It focuses on Vienna at the turn of the 20th century (18901920); and it investigates theater phenomena in a cross-cutting fashion: performative behavior in public as well as a production on a stage; bourgeois drama and modern dance just as popular farces. Theater thereby turns into a multi- layered cultural practice through which Jewish belonging was negotiated, self-consciously asserted, or questioned. Jews described their public life "as if on a stage." Due to modern Antisemitism, they were exposed to constant observation and confronted with the accusation of not behaving self-identically, but too "theatrically" in public. Jewish theater artists responded to this social harassment in turn: for example, by experimenting with alternative modes of social existence through theater and dance. Or by closely observing, commenting on, and reshaping public roles in a performative manner. The book interweaves the Jewish history of Vienna with Theater Studies and reveals from a cultural-historical perspective how belonging and participation are negotiated in a modern European society by means of theater. For the Jewish population of Vienna 1900, theater is thus as the study sums up with Stefan Zweig "the play and mirror form of life".

No additional funding sources recorded.