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Subject Guide: Performing Arts

Highlighting dance, music, opera, and theater materials from Center and partner collections

''Jacques Bergson'' at the Yiddish Art Theatre, 1936. P-978. YIVO

CJH Programs

A Tradition of Talent: Jewish Opera Singers and the Patterns That Shaped Their Careers

Samantha M. Cooper (CJH Dr. Sophie Bookhalter Graduate Fellow in Jewish Culture 2020-2021) presents the first extended investigation into the patterns that shaped the trajectories of numerous men and women of Jewish descent who pursued careers as opera singers in New York between 1880 and 1940. Specifically, she attends to how the outsized frequency of name-changing, connections with the synagogue cantorate, performances for Jewish organizations, recordings in Jewish languages, networking with Jewish musicians, impact of the Holocaust, and dedication to the State of Israel shaped these singers' professional lives in particularly Jewish ways.

Hereville: A Nu Musical

Based on the award-winning (and 2023 JewCie-Award-nominated) Hereville graphic novels by Barry Deutsch, this female-driven, family-friendly musical follows Mirka, an 11-year-old girl in a small Orthodox Jewish town. When Mirka meets a witch in the woods, she triggers a series of events that force a reckoning with the memory of her mother, her fractious relationship with her stepmother, and a meteor that could destroy Hereville altogether!

Arthur Miller: American Witness

Join author John Lahr and MacArthur Prize-winning playwright Sarah Ruhl for a conversation about this new biography in Yale University Presss Jewish Lives series. Organized around the fault lines of Miller's life—his family, the Great Depression, the rise of fascism, Elia Kazan and the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Marilyn Monroe, Vietnam, and the rise and fall of Miller's role as a public intellectual—this book demonstrates the synergy between Arthur Miller's psychology and his award-winning plays, All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and The Crucible.