Document Type

Thesis

Date of Degree Completion

Summer 2014

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Theatre Studies

Committee Chair

Jay Ball

Second Committee Member

Scott Robinson

Third Committee Member

Christina Barrigan

Abstract

Maurice Sendak and Tony Kushner adapted Hans Krasa and Adolf Hoffmeister's opera Brundibar for the English speaking stage as well as a children's book, but they struggled with the message the work should pose to audiences. During World War II, fifty-five performances of the opera were staged within Terezin, a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Kushner and Sendak questioned the extent to which the adaptation should memorialize its Holocaust past, or offer new political aspirations. I used archive-based research to reconstruct the development and first productions of the script, which fixated on Sendak and Kushner's competing aesthetic and political perspectives. By the final chapter, I utilize rhetorical criticism to analyze the public reception of the adaptation based on a variety of newspaper reviews. Ultimately, a marriage of Holocaust remembrance (Sendak) and current political relevance (Kushner) defined Brundibar, although American audiences preferred to emphasize the former.

Comments

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