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Conference Puts Tabori in Spotlight Acclaim in Europe hasn’t translated to fame in America By Rebecca McCarthy
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he University of Georgia has held conferences and symposiums on race, wars, peace, farming, teaching and a host of other topics. From Feb. 26 to 28, the state’s flagship institution will hold its first symposium on the Holocaust as scholars from around the world come to Athens to discuss “George Tabori and the Theatre of the Holocaust.” The symposium is being held in conjunction with the production of Tabori’s signature play, “Mein Kampf,” a dark, satirical work focusing on Hitler as an art student in 1910 Vienna. While a ticket is required for the play, all the symposium activities are free and open to the public. Co-sponsored by UGA’s Germanic and Slavic studies department and theater and film studies department, the symposium brings together speakers and participants from Austria, Canada, England, Germany, Israel and Italy, as well as the United States. Financial support has come from across the university, from Duke University and from the German Consulate. Born in 1914 in Budapest into a secular Jewish family, Tabori was working as a war correspondent in World War II when his parents were placed into a concentration camp. Tabori’s father died in Auschwitz,
but his moth The coner escaped. ference has Tabori three keylived in Engnote speakland, the ers: one Middle East dealing with and the Unitfarce, aned States, other with moving from Tabori himcountry to self and the country for third about 25 years, Jewish perbefore reformance turning to studies. Europe, said Anat FeinMartin Kaberg is a gel, the head professor of of the GerJewish and Photo © Nathalie Bauer manic and Hebrew litSlavic stud- George Tabori, shown in Vienna in 2006, died in 2007. erature at ies departthe Jüdische ment. Hochschule “Though in Germany George in Heidelberg, Germany. His talk, “ Tabori is regarded as one of most ac- ‘Macht Kein Theater’: George Tabori claimed playwrights and directors of and His Theater Revisited,” is Feb. the 20th century, in the U.S. he is al- 26 at 4:30 p.m. in the Richard Rusmost unknown, and his work receives sell Special Collections Library audiscant attention from scholars,” Kagel torium. said. An expert in German-Jewish The UGA conference aims to theater, Feinberg wrote “Embodchange that, organizers said. ied Memory: The Theatre of George “The conference brings together Tabori” and “George Tabori,” a biogscholars, but anyone interested in raphy of the playwright. the play would enjoy the opportunity “The Funny Thing About Jewish to hear and learn more about Tabori,” Performance Studies” is the title of said David Saltz, who heads the the- Henry Bial’s lecture Feb. 27 at 1:15 ater and film studies department. “It p.m. in the Russell Special Collecwould be an enriching experience.” tions Library.
Bial is the author of “Acting Jewish: Negotiating Ethnicity on the American Stage and Screen” and is a theater and American studies professor at the University of Kansas. He is also the president of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education. Freddie Rokem, the Emanuel Herzikowitz professor at Tel Aviv University, will speak on “From Tragedy to Farce” on Feb. 28 at 5:15 p.m. in the Fine Arts Building. Rokem is an authority on German-Jewish theatrical relations and the author of the award-winning “Performing History: Theatrical Representations of the Past in Contemporary Theatre.” Two performances are on tap for the symposium. A close collaborator with Tabori, composer Stanley Walden will perform “Fiddlers on the Roof” at 6:45 p.m. Feb. 26 in the Russell Special Collections Library. Roger Grunwald, a veteran theater, film, television and voice actor, will perform a one-man play, “The Mitzvah Project,” about the Mischlinge who served in the German army, Feb. 28 at 2:30 p.m. in the Fine Arts Building. Nazis used the disparaging term to describe soldiers descended from one or two Jewish grandparents. For information about all the symposium, visit www.drama.uga. edu/event/tabori. ■
Portrait of a Monster as a Young Man UGA brings Tabori’s ‘Mein Kampf’ to the stage By Rebecca McCarthy
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FEBRUARY 20 ▪ 2015
very year a selection committee in the theater and film studies department at the University of Georgia picks works to perform. Department head David Saltz remembers suggesting George Tabori’s play “Mein Kampf” and learning that no one but him had read it. But once the committee did so, it was anxious to bring the show to UGA and Athens. Performances will be in the cellar theater of the Fine Arts Building on Baldwin Street from Feb. 19 to 21 and 24 to 28 at 8 p.m. and March 1 at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $16 for the general public and $12 for students. The play will move to Atlanta’s 7 Stages for shows March 12 to 14 at 8 22 p.m. and March 15 at 5 p.m.
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The play’s guest director is Del Hamilton, a UGA graduate and the founder of the 7 Stages Theatre. Hamilton directed another Tabori play, “My Mother’s Courage,” at 7 Stages, Saltz said. Tabori, a Hungarian-GermanJewish playwright and the son of a Holocaust survivor, is well known in Europe, where his works won numerous literary prizes. He wrote screenplays in Hollywood, including “I Confess,” directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and wrote offBroadway plays, said Martin Kagel, the head of the UGA department of German and Slavic studies. He also wrote novels and did translations while in Hollywood, including works by Bertolt Brecht, who influenced him greatly. A native of Germany, Kagel met
Tabori in Berlin in 1997 and interviewed him about Brecht for a yearbook celebrating what would have been Brecht’s 100th birthday. Tabori told Kagel that meeting Brecht was “momentous” and persuaded him to write plays instead of novels. “Mein Kampf” opened in Vienna in 1987 and became one of the most performed plays in Germany. It was staged often into the 1990s and is considered Tabori’s signature work. But the play has been performed only once or twice in the United States, Kagel and Saltz said. “Mein Kampf” is set in 1910 Vi-
enna and shows Hitler as a young, struggling artist who is nevertheless yearning to take over the world. He lives in an area of the city where he comes into contact with Jewish residents. The play explores Jewish and German relations. “You can represent Hitler as a young artist in 1910, but you can’t represent him in 1944 without desecrating the memory of the Holocaust,” Kagel said. “But you can show him as the representation of evil in 1910.” The staging of the play coincides with a weekend international symposium at UGA, “Georgia Tabori and the Theatre of the Holocaust.” ■