Holocaust Cabaret: Re-Making Theatre from a Jewish Ghetto

A unique exploration of a 1943 play adapted by an Australian and a South African production teams in 2017.

A Holocaust Cabaret presents two scripts that were created in 2017 from the same source materials: preserved song lyrics from a performance titled Prince Bettliegend that was created in 1943 in the Terezín (Theresienstadt) Ghetto. The materials were complemented by the popular 1930s jazz melodies to which those lyrics were set, and by fragments of testimony by survivors who performed in or witnessed that production. Lisa Peschel synthesized the existing materials into a rough plot outline, then collaborated with local production teams at the University of Sydney and Stellenbosch University to reimagine the play. A Holocaust Cabaret presents the final scripts alongside a series of essays by her collaborators about the process of their creation and production and an exploration of the original Terezín production.