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Der Standard - March 20, 2007 Making the Broken Whole Again
THE PURSUIT OF COMMUNITY IN THE “TIKUN OLAM” FESTIVAL OF JEWISH THEATER Vienna – The festival of international Jewish theater opened this weekend with a ten-hour performance by the Russian artists collective Laboratoria. The performance, inspired by the myth of the Golem in the play by Halper Leivick, is itself not a finished production (in rabbinical tradition, the word “Golem” refers to the “unfinished”). According to the legend, in the late 16th century, Rabbi Judah Loew (called “Maharal” in the play), created the manlike Golem out of clay to protect the Jewish community of Prague. In an open process surrounding this story, the Laboratoria members do not, however, seek to present this myth to the public, but rather to experience it for themselves, as director Boris Uhananov explained to STANDARD. “It’s all ambivalent: The relationship of Maharal with the creature he has created and that of the director with the actor and the actor with his character.” The Golem explores how a person seizes power over another: “It’s a discomforting story, that’s why we like it.” Uhananov, who has undertaken a mainly theatrical examination of Jewish thought through spiritual association with Jewish texts, focuses exclusively on the concrete work with content. For this reason, it is little consequence to him if the process of more than twenty members of the ensemble is observed by half as many people in the audience. The Impulse of ArtHe isn’t interested in theater as a medium, says Uhananov, and the notion of sensitizing an ideal and geographically scattered, Jewish audience on the common ground of the Torah is of only peripheral concern: “Art cannot be propelled through the communication of problems.” Warren Rosenzweig, artistic director of the festival, has a partly different view (“We can’t separate theater from problems in our social sphere!”) yet he doesn’t really seek a common foundation for Jewish artists. (“This is about the diversity of experience.”) Rosenzweig stands behind the title of the congress: “Tikun Olam – Repair the World,” meaning “to put back the pieces of a culture that was completely broken apart by war, to make a society whole again, and create a new sense of familiarity.” The Vienna festival continues until Saturday with a program of highly diverse theatrical performances (today and tomorrow, Steven Cohen of Johannesburg with his anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist “Chandelier” – previously well received in Berlin and New York), along with discussions. - Isabella Hager © 2007 Der Standard(trans. JTA)
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