Lisa Peschel: Theatre in the Terezin Ghetto

In this series of four lectures, Dr Lisa Peschel will explore theatrical performance in the Terezin ghetto and original scripts written by the prisoners. The first lecture presents the history of the ghetto itself and the role that theatre played for the incredibly varied prisoner population: the ghetto held thousands of individuals of different nationalities and ages, with a wide range of political opinions and attitudes toward their own Jewish identity. The remaining lectures will focus on three scripts, each representing a different group of prisoners: a Czech-language cabaret inspired by the musical revues of Voskovec and Werich, a German-language verse drama based on the myth of Orpheus, and a Purimspiel, written to celebrate the carnivalesque Jewish holiday of Purim.

Lectures will take place from the 30^th of October to the 2^nd of November.

• Monday 30. 10. –⁠ 10.00–⁠11.30 (G 03)
• Tuesday 31. 10. –⁠ 12.00–⁠13.30 (J002)
• Wednesday 1. 11. –⁠ 10.00–⁠11.30 (J002)
• Thursday 2. 11. –⁠ 12.00–⁠13.30 (G01)

The course may be found in the IS: DISE018 Guest Lecturer Course. 

Literature

• PESCHEL, Lisa, ed., DOBIÁŠ, Dalibor, ed. a WÖGERBAUER, Michael, ed. Divadelní texty z terezínského ghetta 1941-1945. Překlad Dalibor Dobiáš a Michael Wögerbauer. 1. vyd. Praha: Akropolis, 2008. 545, [12] s. ISBN 978-80-86903-82-8.
• PESCHEL, Lisa, ed. Performing captivity, performing escape: cabarets and plays from the Terezín-Theresienstadt ghetto. London: Seagull Books, 2014. xxiii, 419 stran. In performance. ISBN 978-0-8574-2-000-8.

Biography

Dr Lisa Peschel is a senior lecturer (associate professor) in theatre in the School of Arts and Creative Technologies, University of York, England. She has been researching theatrical performance in the Terezín/Theresienstadt ghetto since 1998. Her articles on survivor testimony and scripts written in the ghetto have appeared in theatre- and Holocaust-related journals in the US and the UK and in Czech, German and Israeli publications. She has lectured and conducted performance workshops at institutions in the US and UK, in Europe, South Africa and Australia. From 2014 to 2018 she was a co-investigator on the £1.8 million project Performing the Jewish Archive, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her monograph in progress, Stages of Life: Survivor Testimony on Theater in the Terezín/Theresientstadt Ghetto, traces the testimony of five Czech-Jewish survivors from the immediate postwar period to the 1960s, the 1990s and her own interviews with them in 2004-08.