Fascism and Theatre: Comparative Studies on the Aesthetics and Politics of Performance in Europe, 1925-1945 (review)

Book Reviews 129 time involved in translating an entire book, usually only sections-typically the table ofcontents and the necrology-are translated first (additional sections are translated later as tiine and money permit), and these are put on the web site of JewishGen, Inc., a group which focuses on genealogical research on the Internet and hosts a Yizkor Book Translation Project. Much ofthis current recognition ofthe value ofyizkorbooks and the interest in having the books translated and made accessible to all researchers can be attributed to the efforts of Kugelmass and Boyarin in From a Ruined Garden to point people to the function of memorial books in revealing Jewish experience in history. In writing the [yizkor] book the town's survivors gave it back its Jewish and human name along with the most fitting burial they could think of for an annihilated community. They erected a stone, and on it they wrote all they could remember about a time and place that now exist only in memory. In so doing, they and others fulfilled a solemn obligation.... 'In a yizker-bukh, a memorial volume! Today we have set up a tombstone in memory ofyou!' (p.243) Joyce Field Translations Manager JewishGen, Inc. Yizkor Book Project Fascism and Theatre: Comparative Studies on the Aesthetics and Politics of Performance in Europe, 1925-1945, edited and with an introduction by GUnter Berghaus. Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1996. 315 pp. $24.50. Much important academic research appears not in the form ofjournal articles but as "chapters" in loosely organized collective volumes that are often preceded by conferences or colloquia. The great advantage to such publication is its wider availability and thus accessibility; the great disadvantage is that these "books" often contain a somewhat mismatched assortment of short essays. For the most part, readers must peruse such tomes knowing that the contents will probably prove uneven. Fascism and Theatre: Comparative Studies on the Aesthetics and Politics of Performance in Europe, 1925-1945follows an earlierbook edited by GUnter Berghaus; like that earlier volume, Theatre and Film in Exile: German Artists in Exile in Great Britain, 1933-45, it evolved from a conference sponsored by the Universities ofBristol, Granada, and Berlin. Yet in spite ofthe careful planning that went into the symposium and its subsequent publication, this collection ofessays seems at times to lack real unity; rather than offering what Berghaus calls "a wide ranging analysis of the roles and functions played by theatre and other performative means of expression in fascist States," Fascism and Theatre presents an interesting and odd assortment of glimpses 130 SHOFAR Winter 2000 Vol. 18, NO.2 into the theatrical culture ofHitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy, with side trips into Franco's Spain and Petain's France. At its best, many of the book's essays respond in some way to each other. For example, Roger Griffen's opening piece, on the politics and aesthetics of fascist performance, lays a strong foundation for much of what follows, and as a few of the succeeding writers take up their subjects, they do so by referring back to Griffen's definitions and explanations. Such acknowledgment gives some unity to parts of the larger collection. Yet there are many more instances in which individual contributors seem to be writing without any genuine knowledge ofwhat others in the project have done. Erik Levi's closing essay, on opera in Nazi Germany (with a briefsummation of opera in fascist Italy), would clearly have benefited from some connection with Barbara Panse's survey ofcensorship ofdrama within the Reich, and at least two ofthe pieces on Italian theatre-Pietro Cavallo's and Mario Verdone's--even appear to contradict each other at times. And, perhaps more disconcertingly, Serge Added's chapter on Jacques Copeau's career under Vichy is admittedly lifted from his excellent book (yet to be translated into English), Le Theatre dans les annees Vichy, and makes little connection with the rest of the material. There is, in fact, some very fine work in the collection. Berghaus's own "The Ritual Core of Fascist Theatre," although it never sufficiently addresses the problems in reception which it raises, nonetheless provides an anthropological background to the...