And She Died …And She Survived Through Art
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JEWISH THEAT RE COLLABORATIVE …and she lived …and she died …and she survived through art. Charlotte Salomon b. Berlin 1917 d. Auschwitz 1943 Mixed Media Performance & Graphic Novel Exhibit February 3-20, 2011 Disjecta 8371 N Interstate 97217 jewishtheatrecollaborative.org 503-512-0582 Photo painted by Trina Baucom Charlotte Salomon’s Life? Or Theatre? Jewish Theatre Collaborative takes you through the looking glass into the epic World War II pre-graphic novel of the little known artist Charlotte Salomon. Step into Life? Or Theatre?, Salomon’s 700 pages of images, text and music adapted into a 90 minute electrifying, mixed media performance. Charlotte Salomon’s Life? or Theatre? opens February 3th at Disjecta Interdisciplinary Art Center in the Historic Kenton Neighborhood. As a preview to the performance, audiences will be able to take in the exhibit “The Graphic Novel – Not Just A Place For Super Heroes” focuses on the explosion of social and personal narratives in the graphic novel genre. Talk backs held following all performances will feature special guests (artists, historians, mental health professionals and survivors) responding to and reflecting on the work. Salomon’s paintings, over 100 of which are projected large scale during the performance, are masterpieces, some echoing modern artists such as George Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Amedeo Modigliani. Her innovative fusion of image, text and music remains cutting edge today, 70 years later. History of Performance: In 2008-2009 Jewish Theatre Collaborative partnered with Oregon Jewish Museum, securing an opportunity grant from RACC to adapt and workshop Charlotte Salomon’s Life? or Theatre? 1 Charlotte Salomon’s Life? Or Theatre? Performers: Cantor Ida Rae Cahana Kate Mura Doren Elias Jamie M. Rea George Lederer Darrell Salk Michele Mariana Designers: Sam Kusnetz, Mark Loring, Peter West, featuring commissioned songs by Rody Ortega, and original designs by Sarah Gahagan,. About The Creation of the Original Work 1941, a 24 year old German refugee, Charlotte Salomon, painted day and night in a small room in the south of France, creating a 700 page opus of paintings riddled with text and musical references entitled Life? Or Theatre? A Play with Songs. The work weaves the personal narrative of a young girl striving to find her voice as an artist with the larger social narrative of the rise of the Nazis and how that rise transformed the lives of German Jews. Entrusting the work to a local doctor, Charlotte said, “Keep this safe. C’est tout ma vie. It’s my entire life.” Salomon was sent to the gas chambers in Auschwitz, but the work remarkably, survived, and Solomon, through the work, survives. 2 Attending the program Where: Disjecta, 8371 N Interstate in the historic Kenton neighborhood When: February 3-20, 2011 Thursday–Saturday 8PM, Sunday at 2 PM Student Matinees Thursdays February 10th and 17th Tickets: $20 Regular/ Students $15 / Seniors $18 Run time is approximately 90 minutes with no intermission Exhibit is open an hour before the performance Directions to Disjecta 3 Talk back Speakers and Dates JTC creates opportunities for audiences to ask questions and start complex conversations that will hopefully continue well beyond the theatre. Survivors, Oregon Arts Leaders, Historians and others will join JTC for talkbacks to address the primary theme of Survival. Other subjects addressed in talkbacks may include The Historical context of German Jewry leading up to the rise of the Nazis German Expressionism of the 30s Art and the Nazis The Epidemic/Phenomenon of Depression documented in the play How is this art related to the graphic novel scene? Thursday, February 3 Friday, February 4 Saturday, February 5 Sunday, February 6 Thursday, February 10 Friday, February 11 Saturday, February 12 Sunday, February 13 Thursday, February 17 Friday, February 18 Saturday, February 19 Sunday, February 20 4 AArcrchhiivvaallArchival IIImagesImmaaggeessmages 5 PartnersPartnersPartners JTC’s work with partners and community sponsors is the cornerstone to its ability to achieve a depth of programming and the breath of impact. Disjecta Interdisciplinary Arts Center is an established hub of the contemporary arts scene, curated the recent “Portland 2010: A Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Art,” and brings resources and knowledge to the table to curate and host the companion graphic novel exhibit Committed to contemporary art since 2000, Disjecta provides essential resources for artists to create and exhibit new work. After a period of uncharacteristic quietness, Disjecta announced the public opening of our new 10,000sf arts building at 8371 N Interstate in the historic Kenton neighborhood. The former bowling alley turned abandoned hydraulic shop underwent a facelift since and now houses five large, fully leased artist studios, along with 3,500 sf of visual exhibition space. www.disjecta.org The Oregon Holocaust Resource Center (OHRC) an educational organization, applies the lessons of the Holocaust to teach the importance of promoting a just and humane society, which values respect and acceptance. As a not-for-profit, nonsectarian organization, the OHRC is dedicated to communicating the lessons of the Holocaust to teachers, students, and the general public in Oregon and SW Washington. This is in fulfillment of the legacy left by victims to survivors: To Remember; to Record; to Understand; to Explain, and to Enlighten Future Generations. 6 WHAT IS JEWISH THEATRE COLLABORATIVE? JTC engages people in Jewish Stories from the past and present exploring values, traditions and history in order to better comprehend the diversity of contemporary human experience. Central to our work are values of participation, depth and learning. JTC events, performed at both traditional and non-traditional theatre venues, bring together Jewish and non-Jewish audiences to explore the complex legacy of the Jewish existence in the modern world. Our performances provide an ideal environment for exploration, awakening curiosity, opening minds, and challenging stereotypes. We use collaborative strategies to help partner organizations achieve social goals through the power of theatre to inform and engage. After the show, we invite our audience to ask questions, opening complex conversations about the content and its reverberation in our lives. JTC’s work with partners and community sponsors is the cornerstone to its ability to achieve a depth of programming and the breath of impact. Past Partners Cedar Sinai Park, German American Society, Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies at PSU, Israel Consulate, Institute of Israeli Drama, Institute for Judaic Studies, Jewish Arts Month, Mittleman Jewish Community Ctr, Oregon Jewish Museum, Oregon Jewish Community Foundation /PJ Library, Oregon Area Jewish Committee, Oregon Holocaust Resource Center, Portland Jewish Academy, The Yiddish Hour Past Community Sponsors Africa House, Artist Repertory Theatre, Mary Jo Tully and Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon, Beit Haverim/South Metro Jewish Congregation, Cedar Sinai Park, Center for Intercultural Organizing City of Portland Office of Human Relations and Human Rights, Coalition Against Hate Crimes, CAHC, Community Relations Committee of the JFGP, Congregation Beth Israel, Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, German American Society, The Garaventa Center for Catholic Intellectual Life and American Culture, Greater Portland Hillel, Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies, Havurah Shalom, Hispanic Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, Human Rights Comm. of Washington County, Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, Miracle Theatre Group, Mittleman Jewish Community Center, Neveh Shalom, Never Again Coalition, Oregon Jewish Community Foundation, Oregon Jewish Museum, Oregon Nikkei Endowment, Portland Jewish Academy, St. Michaels and All Angels Episcopal Church 7 Charlotte Salomon 1917 – 1943 by Mary Lowenthal Felstiner www.jwa.org “The war raged on and I sat by the sea and saw deep into the heart of humankind.” (Charlotte Salomon, 1942) Charlotte Salomon was twenty-three years old in 1940 when she made a painting of her face—a nameless, stateless, Jewish face. At the time, she was living as a refugee from Nazism in Villefranche on the French Riviera, and she had just made a startling discovery: that eight members of her family, one by one, over the years, had committed suicide. With this traumatic revelation in mind, she arrived at what she called “The question: whether to take her own life or to undertake something eccentric and mad.” Something “eccentric and mad” turned out to be an artwork in over seven hundred scenes, painted during one year (1941–1942), enriched by dialogues, soliloquies and musical references, arranged into acts and scenes, and titled “Life? Or Theater? An Operetta.” This massive artwork recounted the story of her Berlin Jewish family from World War I up to the day in 1941 when she decided to paint her life rather than to take it, then sat down by the Mediterranean “and saw deep into the heart of humankind.” The story she recounted (a true one but in fictionalized form) started with the 1913 suicide of Charlotte Grunwald, daughter of Ludwig and Marianne Grunwald, highly cultured residents of Berlin, and sister of Fränze Grunwald, whose shocked reaction drove her to save others by becoming a nurse. In the hospitals of World War I she fell in love with a young surgeon named Albert Salomon. Their marriage resulted in the birth, on April 16, 1917, of a daughter Charlotte, named after the sister who had taken her life. In the tense atmosphere of interwar Berlin, little Lotte Salomon watched her father overwork to become a professor at the Berlin University Medical School, and her mother turn to lonely despair. In 1926, when she was nine, Lotte was told her mother had died of influenza. In fact, she had thrown herself out of a window. This and other suicides in the maternal family were kept secret from Lotte for the next thirteen years, for the startling increase in suicides, most dramatically among educated, middle-class German Jewish women, was considered dangerous and shameful. The effect of loss and silence was to make Lotte Salomon both solitary and profoundly observant.