Glas, Steine und Mut

Glas, Steine und Mut (Glass, Stones, and Courage)
Commemoration with an Eye to the Future
The Window, November 9, 2010

Text and Performance: Warren Rosenzweig, Günther Schöller
Music & Lyric, "vayl ikh bin a yidele" by Yankele Hershkowitz, composed in the Lodz Ghetto

The Jewish Theater of Austria, founded in 1999, is the first production company of its kind in Austria since 1938. Its independent, provocative programming is not supported by the Office of Culture (Kulturamt) of the City of Vienna, which controls the city's enormous, arts and culture budget.

"Theater arts funding in Vienna is government centralized. Performance groups compete with each other for a hard pumping at the whorehouse of city sanctioned culture. At taxpayer's expense, a condition of dependency between artist and politician is established that may continue for as long as the artist remains submissive. Ticket sales are of no consequence compared with 'Vitamin B' - 'B' for 'Beziehung' (relationship). The annually replenished treasure chest is there to be squandered by party functionaries and politically adjusted artistic directors.

Subsidies for theaters, large and small, and for dependent groups, called 'Free groups',(1) are meted out according to a nondiscriminatory system of nepotism, censorship, political expedience: Government run, organized crime. Since professional theater in Vienna is nearly impossible without city and state support, cultural diversity on stage is discreetly regulated by politicians while free expression is effectively suppressed.

The first questions for the artistic director who wants to work: 'Am I worthy of positive censorship?' 'Does the Culture Politician(2) like me?' 'Does my work conform?' Anybody's slave, the oppressor is internal, like the self-effacing, Judeophobic Jew."

- From "Totem & Tabori - The Genesis and Second Coming of the Jewish Theater of Austria"

(1) freie Gruppen
(2) Kulturpolitiker

This event was generously supported by:
Schloss Gobelsburg / http://www.gobelsburg.com
Trzesniewski / http://www.trzesniewski.at
Akakiko / http://akakiko.at
Siebensternbräu / http://www.7stern.at
Peter J. Fuchs - Direct Marketing / http://www.peterfuchs-directmarketing.com

Video: Imamovic, Sorge, Fenzl
Editing: Mustafa Alic, Christoph Krainer
Historical photo of Berlin Wall, Nov. 1989, by Daniel Antal

Category:

Education

[YiddishPoetry]

As always; excellently done. Bravo, Warren