performance
Miryeml - In-person Event & Live on Zoom
Tea Arciszewska's Miryeml was heralded as a powerful memorial to the million children murdered in the Holocaust. This nearly-forgotten modernist masterpiece is now available in English translation for the first time.
Arciszewska was a dazzling figure in the prewar Warsaw Yiddish culture scene – an actress, dramaturge, salon hostess, and muse to the renowned Yiddish writer I. L. Peretz. In the 1920s, she began writing a play about the experiences of children during the pogroms that followed World War I. She worked on it for decades, first publishing Miryeml in 1958. Yiddish critics praised the play, seeing it as a powerful response to the Holocaust. They recognized the character Miryeml as an extraordinary figure in Yiddish drama. The play received an Alexander Shapiro Prize from the Congress for Jewish Culture for Best Yiddish Drama.
Miryeml is a modernist work that deftly integrates twentieth-century history and Jewish folklore into a narrative about children’s response to trauma, challenging our expectations of Yiddish theatre.
Directed by Allen Lewis Rickman, this “rehearsed reading” will be performed in Sonia Gollance’s new English translation.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
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