How Contemporary Uk Jewish Theatre Lost Its Carnival and How a Return to the Tradition of the Purim-Shpil Could Bring It Back

HOW CONTEMPORARY UK JEWISH THEATRE LOST ITS CARNIVAL AND HOW A RETURN TO THE TRADITION OF THE PURIM-SHPIL COULD BRING IT BACK. By ROBERT MESSIK A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Drama and Theatre Arts School of Arts and Law The Old Library SOVAC University of Birmingham August 2018 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract Petrified is a contemporary purim-shpil about a man turning into a Golem - a clay creature from Jewish folklore. It draws on traditions from the original form of Jewish theatre, sanctioned once a year at the Purim festival, as well as on the work of Leone de’ Sommi (1525 – 1590), and his five act structure captured in the Four Dialogues of 1556. The accompanying critical work will use Mikhail Bakhtin’s examination of Francoise Rabelais’s work to gain an understanding of the crucial role carnival played in the lives of the people, whilst making connections with the unique position Purim holds within Judaism. I will attempt to offer a definition of Jewish theatre, whilst exploring its tendency to veer towards a conservative realism that belies its origins; the UK perceptions of Judaism, its perceived association with Israel and the challenges in using the purim-shpil as a starting point to create a piece of contemporary theatre that can appeal to a secular audience. I will then document how I have attempted to address these issues through the development of Petrified and how it might be possible to create a richer and more varied theatrical culture within Judaism in the contemporary UK. For Kelly, Reuben, Raphy and Latka. Without their love and support this could never have happened. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………….1 CHAPTER 1 – PURIM, THE PURIM-SHPIL AND CARNIVAL…………………………5 Carnival……………………………………………………………………………………..10 Ritual Spectacle……………………………………………………………………………10 Comic Verbal Compositions………………………………………………………………12 Various Genres of Billingsgate……………………………………………………………15 The Development of Theatre……………………………………………………………..16 The Purim-shpil…………………………………………………………………………….23 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….27 CHAPTER 2 – JEWISH THEATRE IN THE UK………………………………………..29 A Definition for Jewish Theatre…………………………………………………………..30 The Medium of Theatre…………………………………………………………………...32 A Jewish or Judaized Narrative and a Jewish set of beliefs and or/Values…………33 A Jewish language, including nonverbal codes shared by playwrights, actors and spectators…………………………………………………………………………………..38 An obvious Jewish author (playwright or director)……………………………………...41 The State of Jewish Theatre in the UK…………………………………………………..43 Contemporary Jewish Theatre in the UK and Carnival………………………………..52 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….55 CHAPTER 3 - Potential Problems with the Purim-shpil……………………………….56 Purim and Violence………………………………………………………………………..56 Purim and Misogyny……………………………………………………………………….64 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….70 CHAPTER 4 – THE DEVELOPMENT OF PETRIFIED………………………………..71 Plot…………………………………………………………………………………………..73 Structure…………………………………………………………………………………….77 Characters…………………………………………………………………………………..81 Language……………………………………………………………………………………89 Performance Space………………………………………………………………………..91 Ritual and Theatre…………………………………………………………………………94 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….97 CHAPTER 5 – DEVELOPING THE DRAFT……………………………………………99 One Man, Two Guvnors by Richard Bean………………………………………………99 Oresteia – A New Adaptation by Robert Icke………………………………………….106 Everyman – adapted by Carol Ann Duffy………………………………………………114 Mistero Buffo – by Dario Fo……………………………………………………………..118 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………...124 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………126 PETRIFIED, A CONTEMPORARY PURIM-SHPIL…………………………………...129 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………….237 1 Everything being a constant carnival, there is no carnival left. – Victor Hugo INTRODUCTION ‘Jewish theatre in the UK is experiencing an interim period of voice with Arnold Wesker feeling old fashioned and nostalgic and with a new generation trying to find their place’.1 So said Rachel Mars when asked whether Jewish theatre in contemporary Britain is flourishing. Mars is a writer and performer and works closely with JW3, a Jewish organisation aiming to bring Jewish arts and culture to the community. This thesis will argue that one way for that new generation to find its place is to return to its origins in the festival of Purim, the Jewish version of carnival, and all its associated anarchy and chaos. It will analyse the current ‘interim period of voice’ and the conspicuous lack of carnival therein, before demonstrating how my play, Petrified, explicitly seeks to redress that lack by drawing on Judaism’s theatrical heritage and updating the purim-shpil for the contemporary stage. Purim, the Festival of Lots, occurs on the fourteenth Adar, normally falling in March or April in the Gregorian calendar. On that day the Jewish community gathers to hear from the Megillah - the book of Esther - the final, and possibly most curious, book of the Jewish Bible. The Megillah tells the story of Esther, a young woman who used her position in the court of King Ahasuerus to foil a plot to murder the Jews of the land. In Chapter 1, I will explore the many peculiar aspects of these celebrations, focusing particularly on the purim-shpil.2 Originally a parodic reading of the Megillah, the purim-shpil, as described by Joel Berkowitz, ‘helped to establish a largely seasonal or occasional performance tradition in Yiddish culture’.3 This tradition remained the chief form of Jewish performance up until the late eighteenth century 1 Rachel Mars interview conducted on 12 August 2015. 2 The word purim-shpil or purim spiel is taken from the Yiddish meaning Purim play. I will be using the phraseology as used by Dr. Eli Rozik for consistency. 3Joel Berkowitz, ‘Writing the History of Yiddish Theatre’, in Yiddish Theatre New Approaches, ed. by Joel Berkowitz (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2003), pp. 1 – 25 (p. 2). 2 development of the Haskalah4 when there finally emerged ‘a stable, professional Yiddish theatre’.5 Scholars such as Eli Rozik and Ahuva Belkin have written extensively on the relationship between Jewish theatre, the purim-shpil and carnival, but this thesis will reveal how that relationship is no longer at play in contemporary UK Jewish theatre. In his introduction to Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, Michael Holquist explains what carnival was and the vital place it occupied in society: Carnival must not be confused with mere holiday or, least of all, with self- serving festivals fostered by governments, secular or theocratic. The sanction for carnival derives ultimately not from a calendar prescribed by church or state, but from a force that pre-exists priests and kings and to whose superior power they are actually deferring when they appear to be licensing carnival.6 Mikhail Bakhtin, Russian philosopher and literary theorist, explains how carnival celebrated a ‘temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order’.7 But more than that, it was the ‘true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change and renewal’.8 In Chapter 2, through exploring contemporary UK productions of Jewish theatre, I will demonstrate how there is little connection between these productions and the ‘indissoluble and essential relation to freedom’9 that once existed in the purim-shpil. In the UK today, one can find numerous productions influenced by other traditions and cultures, religious or otherwise. Ancient Greek theatre, commedia dell’ arte, morality plays, to name a few, so 4 The Haskalah was a movement that encouraged a more expansive outlook from European Jewry, leading them out of the shtetl and into the study of secular subjects and assimilation within the wider community. For more information read Shmuel Feiner, Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness, (Liverpool: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2014). 5 Berkowitz, p. 2. 6 Michael Holquist, ‘Prologue to Mikhail Bakhtin’, in Rabelais and His World, Translated by Helene Iswolsky (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1965), p. xviii. 7 Bakhtin, p. 10. 8 Bakhtin, p. 10. 9 Bakhtin, p. 89. 3 regularly impact adaptations of texts that resonate with twenty-first century audiences. However, when it comes to Judaism, which according to Michael Billington, has created such a ‘vigorous theatrical culture’,10 there has been a disappointing lack of contemporary adaptations thereof. There are numerous reasons for this and Chapter 2 will first attempt to explore how exactly to define Jewish theatre. Through references to performances and interviews with practitioners working in theatre today, I will explore whether Jewish theatre is successful within the UK and what challenges it might be facing. Judi Herman, for example, journalist and contributor to Jewish Renaissance magazine, insists, there is often

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