Civilian

 

The new hotel that opened in Hell’s Kitchen on 24 November 2021 is special in many ways (as you’ll shortly see).  Nothing about this enterprise, owned by hotelier Jason Pomeranc (b. 1971), designed by Gene Kaufman (b. 1958), with architect and award-winning Broadway set designer David Rockwell (b. 1956) as the interior designer, is more peculiar than its name: Civilian. 

First, I haven’t been able to learn why it’s called Civilian.  Pomeranc is designated “Creator of the CIVILIAN brand,” but I don’t know what that means.  Are there more Civilian hotels around?  Will there be?  And, still, why “Civilian”?

When I first came to New York City, I took classes at HB Studio.  One of my teachers there was director Aaron Frankel (1921-2018), who used to call non-theater people “civilians”—sort of like “muggles” . . . but somehow I doubt that Pomeranc or Rockwell picked up on that.

The closest I can come to some kind of invocation of a point to the inn’s name is the statement on its website that “CIVILIAN gives outsiders the chance to mingle with the who’s who of Manhattan’s creative scene.”  It’s not all that revelatory, but I suppose it’s a clue.

(There are also a couple of references such as one to a bar in the hotel as “a place for ‘civilians’ to mingle,” but I still don’t know what Pomeranc might mean by the word in his context.)

Even leaving the connotation of the name aside—and I don’t really want to because it’s too curious a choice—what to call the hotel is apparently in doubt.  Among the various write-ups I read, some call it “the Civilian” (or even “The Civilian”); others call it “Hotel Civilian,” “Civilian Hotel,” or “Civilian NYC.” 

(Pomeranc did promise, “We’re actively working on sites in several major U.S. cities.  We believe this concept is the new frontier of hospitality from an industry and guest perspective.”  He didn’t indicate, however, that any new hotel based on the same model will also be named Civilian.)

The source of the decisive answer to what to call this new hostelry should be its own website (www.civilianhotel.com); I believe in letting people, countries, communities, and companies decide for themselves what others should call them.  Civilianhotel.com chooses “Civilian”—no “the,” no “hotel,” no “NYC,” just plain “Civilian.” 

I find that a little awkward, at least while it’s new—but that’s the little dear’s decision.  Anyway, if the hotel works out and becomes a popular spot to stay, eat, or just hang out, it can call itself whatever it wants, and no one will carp (much).  So, let’s wait and see.

Civilian is the undertaking of Pomeranc’s Sixty Collective and the Rockwell Group.  Located at 305 W. 48th Street (west of 8th Avenue), it has 27 stories and 203 rooms.  Civilian’s main entrance on the north side of 48th is a black canopy protruding over the sidewalk from the red brick façade, emblazoned with the name of the hotel.

The 303-foot tower above the brick façade is clad in a mixture of floor-to-ceiling glass and opaque, dark gray paneling covering up the blank concrete walls.  The lower part of the structure, which, constructed of reclaimed bricks to look like a restored older building, is five stories, with the four upper floors pierced by four tall, slim, open arches. 

Above the ground floor, the structure’s façade sits several feet in front of the actual front wall of the brick building, which is set back from the street outside for a feeling of retreat.  On the other hand, the front wall of the first-floor restaurant and lounge has a huge, multi-paned window that encourages street-scene watching and opens onto a sidewalk terrace furnished with potted trees, dining tables, and lighting fixtures.

“I look at the hotel’s design very cinematically,” emphasizes Pomeranc; “I like to create vignettes and little reveals behind each corner.”

According to several architectural reports, the Civilian building covers over 73,000 square feet of area, with more than 59,000 square feet devoted to guest rooms.  (That leaves about 14,000 square feet for mechanicals and service areas as well as guest amenities.)

I don’t know how that stacks up against other New York City hostelries, but Pomeranc has asserted that “the rooms are more petite than what we’ve done in the past.”  That seems to mean 150 square feet for what Civilian designates a “Cozy” (“small yet luxurious,” furnished with a queen-sized bed or two twins) and 260 square feet for a “Spacious” (with a king, queen, or two doubles).

Several reviewers of the new inn have called it a “boutique” hotel, but I’m not sure what that signifies.  I gather the definition is flexible.  Wikipedia defines one as “a small hotel which typically has between 10 and 100 rooms in settings with upscale accommodations and individualized unique selling points (USPs).”  Civilian, of course, is over twice that maximum capacity, but fits the other criteria.  (We’ll see about the USP‘s momentarily; I’m saving them for later in the post.)

The website Les Boutique Hotels, which admonishes, “There is no strict definition when it comes to describing boutique hotels,” says a boutique hotel is “a small, stylish hotel, usually located in a fashionable location in the city’s urban district.”  That fits more-or-less . . . if you accept Hell’s Kitchen as a “fashionable location.”  Wiktionary, however, just says one’s a “small hotel in settings with upscale accommodations and individualized unique selling points,” which covers Civilian.

The interior of the brick structure features exposed, used red brick, like the exterior, and wood paneling.  In general, the look is that of the backstage areas of an older theater—a mainstay of the decorative theme for Civilian that I’ll get to shortly.

Next to the entrance on the ground floor is a lounge and bar and outside in the rear is a “secret” garden.  (The press report says the garden’s “accessed only from a concealed entry point”—but didn’t say from whom it’s concealed.) 

Above the lounge is a second-floor terrace and the Rosevale Restaurant & Cocktail Room, specializing in comfort food.  It’s a modern interpretation of a classic Theatre District diner, featuring a curved, ribbed leather ceiling with mirror panels, red leather banquettes, and brass accents.

There’s also a roof-top deck with a second, enclosed bar and lounge on the 27th floor of the tower with panoramic views of Hell’s Kitchen and New York City’s West Side all the way to the Hudson River down to Hudson Yards at 41st Street and the West Side Highway.  It’s inspired by “the whimsical rooftop gardens of historic Broadway theatres where summer shows were held.”

(Roof-top garden theaters became common at the turn-of-the-century Gilded Age in New York City, meant to replicate the garden theaters of Europe.  There was no space for garden theaters in Manhattan, however, so theater-owners decided to move them up to the theater’s rooves.  Thus was born the roof-top garden where entertainment seekers could find acrobats, Russian swans, monkeys, and cows appearing amidst grottoes, waterfalls, duck ponds, vine-wrapped arches, and pagodas.

(They started with the Casino Theatre, built by Rudolph Aronson at 39th and Broadway, which opened in 1883 and went on to include Stanford White’s Madison Square Garden on 23rd Street, opened in 1892, and Oscar Hammerstein I’s Olympia Theatre, an entire city block at 44th and Broadway, which opened in 1896, and his Paradise Roof Garden, 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue, which opened in 1901.)

The hotel’s room sizes notwithstanding, Pomeranc declares, “CIVILIAN is about bringing affordable luxury to the next generation of business and leisure travelers.”  The hotelier insists, “The quality level should not diminish because of the room size.”  The inn’s website touts: “At CIVILIAN, we believe luxury design should be for everyone.”

“I don’t believe that the guest should have to sacrifice anything on a visual or textual experience, whether it’s the rich velvets from the fabrics or the tile in the bathroom or the quality of sheets and linens and pillows,” says Pomeranc.  

The guest rooms are decorated in “darker tones and tactile surfaces like lacquered woods and velvet to create a New York ambiance,” says Pomeranc.  They have “hand-painted details, four-poster beds, [and] upholstered benches.”  The bathrooms have glazed porcelain sinks and are equipped with heated floors.

Room prices at Civilian range from $160 a night up, depending on the date(s) booked and the amenities and extras a guest selects.  The new hotel offers what it dubs “Customization” for the guest’s stay: “Everything you want and nothing you don’t need.”  The “Basic,” “Essential,” and “Inclusive” tiers allow guests to choose their preferred way to stay, with the addition that they can always add extra amenities based on their needs.

(It may interest prospective guests that Civilian is also pet-friendly and offers several levels of pet accommodation.  Check the website for details: https://www.civilianhotel.com/faq.)

And, now those USP’s—the “unique selling points”:

This is what caught my attention—and why this article is posted on Rick On Theater—when I saw the news report on WCBS-TV (Channel 2 in New York City) at the end of its 5 p.m. broadcast on Wednesday, 2 March.  It was a segment on the CBS 2 News feature “Broadway and Beyond.” 

The anchor, Maurice DuBois, introduced the report:

When you think of Broadway, maybe you imagine taking in a great show and a dinner, with a stroll through Shubert Alley.

CBS2’s Dave Carlin has more on a new hotel where you can immerse yourself in theatricality.

Civilian, in fact, is inspired by the neighborhood in which it’s located: the Theatre District.  It’s steps from Times Square with the Theatre Development Fund’s TKTS discount booth (in Duffy Square, the triangle formed by W. 47th, Broadway, and 7th Avenue) and up 48th Street from the Walter Kerr Theatre (Hadestown – 2019 Best Musical) and the Longacre (Macbeth with Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga, directed by Sam Gold – previews start 29 March, opens 28 April).  The décor is thoroughly Broadway-themed.

Civilian, writes Rebecca King on northjersey.com, “is a celebration of old-time Broadway, dressed by Broadway insiders.”  I described the entry to the hotel as a canopy, but it’s really a miniature theater marquee.  The hotel’s name flashing from it is the “theater’s” designation.  The entrance resembles the stage door of a vintage theater.  King dubbed it “the most Broadway of Broadway hotels.”

Inside the stage-door entry is the hotel’s lobby, which looks like a classic theater’s back of house (except spiffier), a feeling that’s enhanced by the marquee-style lighting in the ceiling.  The lobby’s all dark-stained wood and there are even old-style wooden theater seats against the walls for guests waiting to register. 

A spiral iron staircase leads up to the second floor just like one back stage that might go up to the second level of dressing rooms.  The stairway is dramatically draped in a curtain that could have covered the proscenium opening of a Broadway house.

The guest rooms are reminiscent of dressing rooms in a theater—except better appointed.  (They are painted, for instance, in either deep blue or wine-maroon with hand-painted details—not features of most theater dressing rooms.)  

The pillows on the beds are covered in fabrics imprinted with abstract patterns by costume designers Jeff Mahshie (Tony-nominated for 2016’s She Loves Me) and David Zinn (Tony-nominated for 2018’s SpongeBob SquarePants, 2017’s A Doll's House, Part 2, 2015’s Airline Highway, 2015’s Fun Home, and 2010’s In the Next Room).  The walls are adorned with framed costume and set renderings.

The wallpaper in the elevators has also been created by costume designers such as Isabel and Ruben Toledo (After Midnight, 2014 Tony nominee) and William Ivey Long (Hairspray, 2003 Tony winner, and Beetlejuice, 2019 Tony nominee) from abstractions of their costume creations. 

There are theater photographs everywhere in Civilian, including in the lobby where are displayed the opening-night portraits of Little Fang (the professional name of Manchester, New Hampshire-based husband-and-wife photographers Lindsey and Adam Brisbine).

The art in the hallways of Civilian is grouped around a different theme on each floor.  On the fourth floor, for example, are rehearsal photos of Michael Bennett (1943-87) at Dreamgirls (1981-85; 6 Tonys and 7 other nominations, including Best Musical) and the cast of Miss Saigon (1991-2001; 3 Tonys and 8 additional nominations).

Elsewhere in Civilian, including the main bar, all the hallways, and each of the guest rooms, are other theater memorabilia and ephemera.  This is the Olio Collection, a curated display of works by theatrical artists that Rockwell assembled with Tony-winning Hamilton costume designer Paul Tazewell.  Contemporary artifacts come from shows like Hamilton (replica guns and a crown), Cabaret (a pink “shrug”), Wicked, and Kinky Boots (the iconic thigh-high red boots). 

(In addition to the 2016 award for Hamilton, Tazewell was nominated for Tonys for Ain’t Too Proud, 2019; A Streetcar Named Desire, 2012; Memphis, 2010; In the Heights, 2008; The Color Purple, 2006; and Bring in ’Da Noise, Bring in ’Da Funk, 1996.) 

The collection represents over 350 pieces of art, including sketches, models, photos, costume pieces, and props from a century of theater history, such as historic photographs of the Stage Door Canteen (1942-46) and posters for the Stage Women’s War Relief (founded in 1917, the predecessor of the American Theatre Wing).

In Rosevale are set models from shows such as Hadestown (scenic design by Rachel Hauck, 2019 Tony), Slave Play (scenic design by Clint Ramos, 2020 Tony nomination), Moulin Rouge! (scenic design by Derek McLane, 2020 Tony), and Chicken & Biscuits (scenic design by Lawrence E. Moten III).  Rockwell intends to work with emerging and established “makers” of theater, the design artists, costumers, photographers—the folks among whom he’s worked in productions—to create a rotating exhibit of theater artifacts with new displays being swapped out for previous ones.

Pomeranc even hired a Broadway press firm, Rick Miramontez’s DKC/O&M, to help build a connection to the theater industry.  (The current Broadway productions for which Miramontez’s company handles publicity and press relations are Plaza Suite, The Music Man, MJ The Musical, Company, Hadestown, Dear Evan Hansen, and To Kill a Mockingbird.)  “We know our Broadway colleagues will find [Civilian] a worthy and wonderful new clubhouse,” says Miramontez.

In the restaurant are featured 41 round wall sconces decorated with sketches of Broadway houses by set designers such as Derek McLane (Tonys for Moulin Rouge! and 33 Variations, 2009; Tony nominations for A Soldier's Play, 2020, Anything Goes, 2011, and Ragtime, 2010), Es Devlin (Tony nominations for American Psycho, 2016, and Machinal, 2014), Scott Pask (Tonys for The Book of Mormon, 2011, The Coast of Utopia, 2007. and The Pillowman, 2005; nominations for Pal Joey, 2009, and Les Liaisons Dangereuses, 2008), Tony Walton (Tonys for Guys and Dolls, 1992, The House of Blue Leaves, 1986, and Pippin, 1973, and nominations for Uncle Vanya, 2000, Steel Pier, 1997, She Loves Me, 1994, The Will Rogers Follies, 1991, Grand Hotel, 1990, Lend Me a Tenor, 1989, Anything Goes, 1988, The Front Page, 1987, The Real Thing, 1984, A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine, 1980, and Chicago, 1976), Mimi Lien (Tony for Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, 2017), and Rockwell himself (Tony for She Loves Me, 2016, and nominations for On the Twentieth Century, 2015, You Can't Take It With You, 2015, Kinky Boots, 2014, Lucky Guy, 2013, and Hairspray, 2003).

(British-born Tony Walton, b. 1934, died earlier this month at 87.  In addition to his set designs, he also designed costumes—he was nominated for costume Tonys for Anything Goes in 1988 and The Apple Tree in 1967.  Married to actress Julie Andrews, his teenage sweetheart, from 1959 to 1968, he was nominated for a 1965 Academy Award for his costumes in the Andrews vehicle Mary Poppins.  He was nominated for several other costume or set-decoration Oscars and shared the award for set decoration in 1980 with three other artists for All That Jazz.  Walton also shared an Emmy for art direction with two others in 1986 for Death of a Salesman.)

The bulk of the Olio Collection (I don’t know where the name comes from) is displayed in large vitrines set in walls of the second-floor Library, also known as the Blue Room because of the royal-blue leather upholstery on the chairs and banquettes and the wall-covering of the same hue.  (The Blue Room is also available for business meetings for clients of Civilian.)

Says interior designer Rockwell,

The Olio Collection is a visual celebration of Broadway and the theatrical art form . . . .  I’ve been lucky enough to work with an incredible team of co-curators, all Broadway designers of different disciplines, to create this vast and ever-changing collection.  The Olio Collection was our way of ensuring that a layer of authentic theatricality was incorporated into the hotel’s DNA from a design perspective.  One of the things that makes the theater so special is how ephemeral it is.  A performance only exists for a single moment in time; once a show closes, it’s gone forever.  I really like the idea of giving all of this work a bit of permanence.

“Part of the intention is to bring in the theater community, the makers,” says Rockwell.  He’s talking about the artists and craftspeople who do the physical work of “making” the show, not the ones who perform in it.  “I knew that that’s what I wanted to do for a living,” recalls the designer-architect.  “I wanted to create places that brought people together,” he continues.  “I was more like the person who made the show.  I wasn’t as interested being . . . in the show . . . .”

“I’m always amazed when I work on a project and there’s a moment in the show when you realize 25 people touch that moment to make it work,” he explains.  He calls those people, the costume and set designers, prop-makers and wig-makers, the scores of professional fabricators, “makers.”  “So,” says Rockwell, “in some ways, this is a chance [for outsiders] to be exposed to all of those different people.”

(I want to note here that on ROT I’ve made a practice of spotlighting many of those same professionals—along with other theater pros who do jobs that few theatergoers know about or even see.  I’ve run articles on a wig-maker, costume designers, set designers, sound designers, lighting designers, and a theater photographer.  I won’t cross-reference them here, but readers can look them up with the blog’s search engine.)

Rockwell, who aside from accolades as a scenic designer is also responsible for the ambience of many restaurants, clubs, hotels, theaters, and other projects around the country, acknowledges, “This hotel links my two greatest passions, which is theater and hospitality.”  

Civilian’s interior designer “envisioned a new home and ad hoc clubhouse to serve the needs of New York’s creative corps of performers, designers, directors, producers, and writers,” promises the Rockwell Group’s website.  “It’s also a place where outsiders in the know can rub shoulders with those who inspire them, and immerse themselves in Broadway and all of its micro-worlds.”

Civilian plans to donate a portion of its revenues to the American Theatre Wing, the nonprofit organization that supports theater and, with the Broadway League, presents the Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Award, to help in its mission of support for the creatives affected by COVID. 

The hotel is looking to forge a long-term partnership with ATW, which supplied many of the historic photos from its archives.  ATW President and CEO Heather Hitchens declares, “A place for theater people to gather that also showcases and celebrates the work of those who don’t always get the attention they deserve” is sorely needed.

With the guidance of Hitchens and Miramontez, Pomeranc is hoping to make Civilian a spot for members of the theater community to gather for photo shoots, interviews, and parties.  The hotelier wants theater folk to think of Civilian as their place, recommending it to other theater people when they come to New York City.  From this description, advisedly the product of DKC/O&M’s efforts, it sounds like Pomeranc and Rockwell have made a good start, but we’ll have to wait a while to see if they succeed.

'The Method' – a Review

 by Kirk Woodward

[I’ve published many articles on Rick On Theater on the subjects of acting and actor-training.  Some were by me—I trained as an actor and have an MFA degree in acting—and some have been by other authors. 

[One of those other writers has frequently been my friend Kirk Woodward, also an actor (though primarily a playwright, composer, and director).  Kirk’s also a great reader and has contributed reports on many fascinating books, both about theater and other fields.  Now he comes back to ROT with a review of a new book about one of the most famous theories of acting and actor-training, The Method.

[Isaac Butler’s The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act is the latest in a long line of books and articles about director and teacher Lee Strasberg’s groundbreaking adaptation of the theories and teachings of Konstantin Stanislavski, the Russian founder of modern Western acting, the dominant technique of most of the 20th century.

[One interesting fact about Butler’s The Method is that it’s not a rave as far as his experience with and judgment of the acting style is concerned.  He’s well worth hearing out, though . . . and so is Kirk.  ~Rick]

The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act by Isaac Butler (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022) is a “biography” of an approach to acting that was first identified and codified in Russia, brought to this country by refugees, taught by a raft of colorful characters, modified by teachers, directors, and books, embedded in this country’s consciousness amid numerous social changes, and ultimately absorbed into the mainstream of entertainment here and worldwide.

The ultimate victor among “Method” approaches was the one taught for decades at the Actors Studio in Manhattan. Butler writes: 

The Method has many definitions, but to instructors of stage acting, it refers very specifically to the techniques and values taught by Lee Strasberg [1901-1982], the most famous and prominent adapter of [Konstantin] Stanislavski’s ideas in the English-speaking world.

(Stanislavski lived from 1863 to 1938.) Butler writes that “The primacy of the actor’s lived experience, the necessity of breaking down both a role and a process into bits, and the goal of using a conscious process to access and manipulate inspiration are the foundation of Stanislavski’s ‘system’” (the Russian’s name for what became known as the Method).

Most prominent among the “techniques and values” developed by Stanislavski and central to the Method is the practice of Affective Memory, in which an actor, through exercises, learns to locate, call up, and reexperience highly charged emotional moments in the actor’s past, with the aim of ultimately being able to apply them to the emotions of a character in a play.

Interestingly, Butler says, “While the ‘system’ would always be associated in America with naturalism, Stanislavski first developed it in order to bring psychological truth to abstract, symbolist works,” which is quite the opposite of what I had imagined.

Butler says that in an acting class he took at the Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C. in the 1990’s,

There were two goals . . . . First, the class would be able to observe how strong emotion actually worked, as opposed to the cliched ways we indicated emotion onstage. The other purpose was to help us find potential keys to unlock our emotions so we could use them in our work.

There are three interesting elements to that report of his acting class experience. The first is that, as far as he knew, the Studio Theatre’s instructors were not specifically committed to the Method at all; by the 1990’s they almost certainly considered it outdated and, as taught by Strasberg, even dangerous.

The second is that those two goals described above are a good high-level description of the Method, particularly as it was taught by Strasberg, even if the teachers did not profess to be committed to it.

The third is that for Butler it was dangerous – he feels he became emotionally damaged by Affective Memory, and he left acting altogether.

Butler knows theater first hand.  (If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have been likely to say, for example, that “In rehearsals, directors perform more than actors do.” It takes having “been there” to know that.) Today he teaches theater history and performance at the New School in Manhattan. He co-wrote The World Only Spins Forward, a narrative of the success of Angels in America by Tony Kushner (b. 1956). He has hosted podcasts on Shakespeare and the creative process, and co-created 2015’s song cycle Real Enemies. He is an excellent guide to the world of theater history.

In his Introduction Butler efficiently addresses the two enormous currents of opinion about acting, that it is an “external” or an “internal” matter (that is, based on the observation and presentation of observable traits, or on a character’s psychology). Assuming that’s a real dichotomy (the argument is never finished), the Method definitely leans toward the latter.

Before reading this book I thought I was reasonably familiar with the history of acting. I realize now that I hardly knew anything; I have learned a great deal from this volume, and will certainly reread it. Out of a wealth of information, let me present a few examples from early chapters of the book.

I knew almost nothing about the relationship between the two men who founded and led the Moscow Art Theater (MAT – and not exactly its official name) in its first phase: Stanislavski and the splendidly named Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858-1943). For that matter, I didn’t know that Nemirovich-Danchenko was a theatrical artist in his own right, a director, playwright, and teacher.

I had assumed that his and Stanislavski’s relationship was roughly equivalent to that of Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996) and George Balanchine (1904-1983), who together created and ran the New York City Ballet. Kirstein dedicated his career to furthering Balanchine’s and invested a great deal of money in it.

“The only justification I have is to enable Balanchine to do what he wants in the way he wants to do it,” Kirstein wrote. He handled the administrative side of the company, allowing Balanchine the opportunity to choreograph freely.

On the other hand, Stanislavski (a stage name, incidentally – I hadn’t known that), although he led on the artistic side, was the one who had the money, and he refused to use it to help underwrite the new MAT. He and Nemirovich-Danchenko had different opinions as well on artistic matters from the beginning.

They more or less agreed to split duties as Kirstein and Balanchine did, but neither was comfortable with the arrangement; they argued, then fought, then stopped speaking altogether. Yet their theater somehow progressed.

I did not know how close the MAT came to closing, not just once but many times. In fact Butler shows that its entire history was fraught with peril, some of it from inside, some external, as first the Czar and then the Communists endangered both the enterprise and the lives of those engaged in it.

Of course, generally speaking, all theater is precarious financially, unless it receives a state subsidy or some other regular flow of funds. In Europe, some theaters (particularly in Germany) enjoy such subsidies; in the United States, basically none have, with the exception of the Federal Theatre Project (1935-1939), part of the New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945).

However, the MAT was precarious in life-and-death ways as well. The director Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940), who began his career working with Stanislavski and developed his own approach to acting, ended up murdered under Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) because of his artistic opinions, which the regime rejected, and he wasn’t the only one to pay that price.

I did not know that Stanislavski throughout his life was uncertain just how his “system” worked, an uncertainty that fed into endless disputes, particularly in the United States, about exactly what he meant and whether he meant it only provisionally or permanently. 

The story goes on, and so, for me, did the surprises, as the Method took shape and was transmitted from Russia, later the U.S.S.R., to western Europe and the United States, to become, like the immigrant population that brought it over, assimilated into the culture. Among the most influential of those who landed here were Richard Boleslawski (1889-1937), Michael Chekhov (1891-1955), and Maria Ouspenskaya (1876-1949), all of them major contributors to the field of acting instruction.

[See “Konstantin Stanislavsky and Michael Chekhov: Realism and Un-Realism,” posted on this blog on 2 May 2011, and the three-part profile of Michael Chekhov, 2, 5, and 8 November 2019.]

Similarly to what happened to Freud’s approach to psychoanalysis, the Method was ultimately modified and supplemented until it’s inaccurate to say today that many of our major actors are Method actors at all.

In fact – another surprise – two performers frequently described as outstanding examples of Method actors really aren’t. Marlon Brando (1924-2004), whose work for many embodied the Method, denied that Lee Strasberg taught him anything; he credited his teacher Stella Adler (1901-1992), whose approach spectacularly diverged from Strasberg’s in 1934. Robert DeNiro (b. 1943) has typically approached his roles through immersive external character study that is not part of the Method at all.

Butler says that “what he [Stanislavski] was describing was, at its core, ineffable.” That fact did not stop many from trying to describe the ineffable as the years went on, through teaching, and in books, beginning with The First Six Lessons (1933) by Richard Boleslawski (aka: Boleslavsky) and Stanislavski’s The Actor Prepares (1936).

But why “ineffable?” What’s so difficult about describing how acting works? The answer surely is that life is complex, and acting, which in some way or other imitates life, borrows from that complexity. As a result, acting is a bundle of opposites, including such enormous pairs as spontaneous and planned, mundane and extravagant, practical and spiritual, entertaining and educating, and so on.

These pairs continually synthesize themselves in whatever the actor is doing at the moment. Sometimes one element predominates, sometimes another. I referred earlier to Stanislavski’s uncertainty about exactly what his “system” was and how it worked. We should look at this uncertainty as a virtue more than as a fault. If acting is anything, it is a continual process of discovery. It changes as life changes.

And then, in a way, it doesn’t – another paradox. If we imagine two actors, perhaps one from 1722 and one from 2022, being able to meet and compare notes, on the one hand they would find their acting styles vastly different, and the same would go for the theories and techniques they applied to their craft.

On the other hand, they would immediately relate to each other as they traded stories about performance catastrophes, backstage quarrels, shortcuts for remembering lines, abusive theater managers and directors, missing paychecks, and so on.

So “it’s a mad world, my masters,” this world of acting, and The Method does it justice, particularly as it describes the remarkable group of characters who populate the story along the way. For illustration I will pick just one story, which perhaps actors may relate to. Lee Strasberg, directing a play for the Group Theatre (1931-1941), was often particularly demanding of his cast.

During a rehearsal, an actor made a small physical mistake, which she immediately corrected. Strasberg asked her, “Why did you do that?” She said it was a mistake, forget it, let’s move on. Strasberg wouldn’t let up. He kept demanding, “Why did you do that?” while the rest of the cast waited.

Finally another actor, known as one of the nicest in the ensemble, said quietly to the person next to her, “Now I’m going to kill him.” She charged Strasberg, fingers open to strangle him. Two other actors held her back. Strasberg ran from the theater and quit as director of the show.

Not your usual rehearsal story, but then The Method features an outlandish cast of characters. Butler is an excellent guide through the thickets of personalities, and theories, too. He recognizes that schools of acting, like other artistic trends, don’t come out of a vacuum; they both react to and intensify what’s going on in society around them. About the wide range of acting styles in recent decades he writes:

The end of the Method era in American culture had no single source. No new Stanislavski arose to lead a war on the prior generation’s hokum. The Method suffered instead the same fate that befell the postwar consensus in which it had been so firmly ensconced. Both began to lose their grip on America in the mid 1970s as the blockbuster, the inflation crisis, and revelations of decades of government wrongdoing struck the nation simultaneously; both stumbled into the 1980’s, punch-drunk and overmatched by a new vision of American society and its citizens. Before, our tax dollars went to advance the common good; now they would be returned to us so we could express ourselves through our purchasing power – helping others, the conventional wisdom went, through helping ourselves. Before, we were bound in common cause – individuals, yes, but part of a society and dedicated to its advancement; we were now to be consumers in a marketplace.

One wonders if it would be possible today for a “school” of acting to raise the almost religious fervor that culminated in the Method: the belief that changing the way people acted on stage would also change the world.

This seems an outlandish hope today, but it was a commonplace during much of the history described in The Method, emerging first in the minds of Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko, and appearing most spectacularly in the Group Theatre (1931-1941), with Harold Clurman (1901-1980) quite literally preaching the doctrine that society needed a new approach to acting that would change the way it saw itself.

Sometimes that expectation almost seemed to happen, as with the production of Waiting for Lefty (1935) by Clifford Odets (1906-1963), a play that vividly presented the struggle between labor and capital – but certainly did not resolve it.

Does acting change us or reflect us? Another conundrum! In any case, acting is no longer limited to the stage, film, and television. It has sprawled along with the diffusion of types of media. It would be fascinating to know how a book would describe the next thirty years of acting styles and techniques.

It’s a sure bet that there will be plenty to say. Meanwhile, we have The Method to give us a vivid and useful look at where we’ve come from.

[Before there was Strasberg’s Method, or even Stanislavski’s System, there was François Delsarte, the first man who tried to codify and systematize the training of actors.  I posted a profile of Delsarte, whose theories were the founding principles of the American Academy of Dramatic Art (founded in 1884), on ROT on 4 January 2014; see “The Father of Actor Training: François Delsarte.”]

"Performing for Survival – Cultural Life and the Theatre in Terezin"

by Bahar Akpinar 

[The two-part article below, Bahar Akpinar’s “Performing for Survival – Cultural Life and the Theatre in Terezin,” was published on 18 and 26 June 2019 in Şalom (https://www.salom.com.tr/SalomTurkey/haber-110941-performing_for_survival________________________cultural_life_and_the_theatre_in_terezin___part_i.html and https://www.salom.com.tr/SalomTurkey/haber-111020-performing_for_survival____cultural_life_and_theatre_in_terezin___part_ii.html).  Şalom is a Jewish weekly newspaper published in Turkey whose name is the Turkish spelling of the Hebrew word shalom (‘peace’).  It was established in 1947, is printed in Istanbul, and, apart from one page in Ladino (the language of Sephardic Jews), is published in Turkish.  (I presume the article below was subsequently translated into English for this posting.  Readers will notice that the translator uses the British spelling and style conventions.)

[Somewhere recently—and I can’t remember where—I read a reference to something called the Theresienstadt or Terezin Cabaret, which was an actual variety entertainment—music, plays, comedy sketches—assembled by the inmates of the Czech concentration camp. 

[I posted an article from 60 Minutes about music composed in concentration camps during the Holocaust on 2 March, and my friend Kirk pronounced it “astounding.”  The cabaret was even stranger because it included comedy.  (Czechoslovakia was a very active cultural center in those days and Prague was the hub of sophisticated cabaret entertainment.  The imprisoned Jews and others in Theresienstadt transit camp—it was a stop on the way to the death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau—brought the spirit with them.) 

[It was apparently an accident that many of the people interned in Terezin were performing artists and writers (including dramatists and composer-songwriters).  I read that Nazi bigwigs like Adolf Eichmann (1906-62) traveled to Terezin to see the cabaret.  Can you imagine anything more ghoulish?]

Part I - Setting up of Terezin as a Concentration Camp

Nazi concentration camps are places where nobody wants to enter voluntarily and be subjected to the bodily experience of being in a concentration camp, but once inside, no one can even mentally leave easily, either. Researchers have been attracted by the weighty, never-ending questioning that imprisoners [sic; Akpinar clearly means ‘prisoners,’ not the Nazis imprisoning them] go through in the camp whereby one encounters the darkest sides of one’s self [sic]. Recent research on the Holocaust has revealed documents with detailed information on the daily lives of the Jewish prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. We have thus been able to witness the depth of the existential resistance displayed by the Jews under [the] direst conditions in the camps.  A considerable amount of the evidence [by] which we can trace the resistance I am referring to, comprises the works of art produced by the Jewish prisoners during their time in the concentration camps, ranging from theatre, music, literature to various other forms of art. Sadly, unlike their work, none of the artists survived. [Some actually did.]

Until recently, the only art activities known to have existed in the concentration camps were the Women’s Orchestras, which were established by the order of the Nazis in the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps. The orchestras were initially founded in order to provide marching music for the Jewish prisoners as they walked from the barracks to their work stations and back. Their melodies accompanied the prisoners on every step on their way to death. We now know that the production of art in the Nazi camps was in fact independent of Nazi orders, secretly governed by the Jewish people themselves. 

The concentration camp where art production was most intensively carried out was the one in Terezin [Theresienstadt in German], where talented and well-educated Jewish artists from Central Europe had been forced to come together in a town a few kilometres away from Prague. This article will focus on the theatrical performances produced in Terezin concentration camp.  

Terezin had been designed as a garrison town, whose construction was completed in 1784. Contained within high walls, it was indeed like a ghetto. It had been home to Christian Czech citizens from the time it was built until its transformation into a Nazi concentration camp, which began with the construction of barracks. This period is called the foundation period of the camp.

The cultural activities in Terezin, that had mainly consisted of improvised sketches, poetry reading and singing in the barracks, started taking place within the first six months of the camp’s construction. These activities were organised even after a few days of arrival of the first prisoners. The leaders of the Jewish community made an application to the Nazi administration arguing that the struggle of the Jews in the camp who were now forced to live as prisoners to hold on to life through art should not constitute a crime, and asked the administration’s permission to organise cultural activities. The Nazis granted permission to the people who they knew were going to die soon. In the Daily Orders issued on December 28th, 1941, it was announced that a “friendship evening” would be organised. Due to the considerable increase in the number and quality of the cultural events in the ghetto over the next two months, in February 1942, the Jewish leaders decided to set up an administrative unit for their organisation, within the prisoners. Thus, Freizeitgestaltung (Office of Leisure Time Activities), which would play a significant role in the cultural life of the camp was formed, directed by a young rabbi, Erich Weiner [1911-44]. With the establishment of this unit, the foundation period of the Terezin ghetto was completed. 

The second period is the transformation of Terezin into a “model camp,” which began with the completion of the local Christians’ transportation from the camp. As soon as the last Christian exited the camp, the Nazi administration opened the doors of the barracks. The prisoners were allowed to walk freely in the camp, but they were banned from the buildings and areas used by the SS.  

In this period, although men and women continued to live in separate barracks, they were allowed to see each other during their time spent outside. All children lived separately from their parents, staying in the barracks reserved for children. The children’s caregivers organised various cultural activities including singing songs and playing games for children, who were unable to receive any formal education under current circumstances.  

In the summer of 1942, Jews from other countries speaking different languages arrived at the camp. Arriving on June 2, 1942, the first of these groups were from Berlin, followed in the next months by many other groups of Jews brought from various German cities. The new transfers led to a change in the demographic structure of the ghetto, particularly in terms of nationality and age. The German Jews who came later were older than the Czech Jews, the ghetto’s first residents. They had been told that . . . Terezin was a town with thermal springs and that if they donated their property to the state, they would be able to live the rest of their lives comfortably in Terezin. Almost all of the Austrian Jews were brought to Terezin within four months. Between June 21st and October 10th, 1942, the number of Austrian Jews who were brought to the camp was 14,000. Their average age was 69 years. Unprepared for the reality in Terezin which was nothing like what they had been promised, elderly German and Austrian citizens began to die due to hunger, illness and exhaustion, leading to a rise in the death rate in the ghetto. In September of 1942 alone, the number of deaths recorded in the ghetto was 4,000. The camp had now reached its highest population of 60,000 and the mortality rate was almost 10 people per day. By the end of 1942, with the increased mortality rate and some of the prisoners having been sent to other concentration camps, the population of the ghetto had dropped to 40,000.

The ghetto was relatively calm at the end of 1942, which marked the beginning of a new period. No new barracks were being constructed for the new arrivals, who settled in the houses previously occupied by civilians. Nevertheless, life conditions were still utterly strenuous. The prisoners were not allowed to own anything apart from the wooden bed they slept on and a few personal belongings on a shelf. They didn’t have any privacy, either. Food was prepared by the respected elderly members of the ghetto, cooked in a few kitchen areas and portioned out to the prisoners on the basis of their age and the work they do in the camp. The young prisoners who worked outside were given more food than the others. Water shortage was one of the greatest problems. Designed for a population of 10,000 people, the water infrastructure was not sufficient for the ghetto which hosted five times as many people. Bathing was based on a ticketing system. In such an environment where even minimum hygiene was not possible, contagious diseases had become rampant, further increased by infestations of lice, fleas and bedbugs.

The national variety in the population of the ghetto increased with the transportation of the Jews from Denmark and the Netherlands in 1943. Due to various clashes between the newcomers and the first residents of the ghetto, the Nazis appointed leaders from the Jewish community, who were allowed to settle in houses with relatively more comfortable life conditions. They were also given less responsibilities and provided with protective health services. Although the majority of the prisoners were aware that the Nazis consciously created the national distinctions and class differences within the Jews, they could not prevent the tension among the camp prisoners. Therefore, a court was set up in order to resolve the conflicts that arose. 

While the tension among Jews was increasingly gaining ground, a new development led to a significant step taken towards rendering Terezin a model ghetto. In November 1942, the Nazi administration granted a request by the International Committee of the Red Cross to carry out an inspection in the Nazi concentration camps and Terezin was chosen as the suitable camp for this visit. This was immediately followed by a request by the Danish authorities for a similar inspection, in January 1943, as 446 Jewish citizens of Denmark had been transported to Terezin. The Nazis made elaborate plans with the sheer purpose of concealing the reality of the concentration camps. Upon the approval of the authorities in Berlin, the “beautification” process began, preparing Terezin for its role as the secluded Jewish settlement that had initially been promised to the prisoners.  

The preparations paved the way to a new period during which the cultural life in the ghetto flourished. Terezin was beautified as if it weren’t the same place where 4,000 people had lost their lives just a few months back. As a result, life in the ghetto during the period between November 1942 and December 1944 proceeded along two lines: the fictional one prepared for the awaited visitors against the harsh day-to-day reality of the ghetto. Masking began with the opening of shops that have quite a limited variety of goods in the ghetto, with the aim of making it look less like a prison. 

Before the inspection of the Red Cross scheduled for December 1943, another important step was taken towards making Terezin a model ghetto: A new order to set up the Stadtversch[ö]nerung, the beautification office, was released. By the spring of 1944, the renovation works in Terezin were almost completed thanks to the hard labour of prisoners. The long-[a]waited visit of the commission consisting of one Swedish and two Danish inspectors, took place on June 23rd, 1944. The commission was accompanied by a Nazi officer, a few officials from the German Red Cross, and authorities from the Reich Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The visitors began their inspection following a predetermined itinerary. Their first stops were the bakery, bank and the performance of Brundibar, the children’s opera [composed by the Czech Hans Krása, 1899-1944]. Despite having serious doubts about the quality of living conditions in the ghetto before their arrival, the members of the commission were impressed by what they saw in Terezin and wrote a positive report approving the conditions in the camp. The Swedish member of the commission, Dr. M[aurice]. Rossel [a representative of the Swiss Red Cross, 1916/1917-after 1997] had later stated in his official report that he had been amazed by what he had seen, adding that everything had been clear as daylight and that nothing could have been hidden from them.

[Some later reports argued that Rossel knew what had been done, but chose not to report it publicly so that he wouldn’t make the conditions worse for the prisoners.]

Following the success of the inspection, the Nazis decided to make a documentary about the ghetto, for which the well-known German-Jewish actor and film-maker Kurt Gerron [1897-1944] was appointed as the director. Titled “An Idyllic Concentration Camp: Terezin: A Documentary” (Das Konsentrationslager als Idylle: Theresienstadt: Ein Dokumentar Film), the documentary was shot in August and September 1944, capturing the last images of many prisoners before they were sent to their death.

Part II - Cultural Activities and the Theater

In December 1942, a cafe was opened in the ghetto, where prisoners could enter with a ticket and spend a few hours, as a preparation for the Red Cross Inspection. It soon became a place where prisoners, while sipping their coffees, could see live music performances by other Jewish prisoners like themselves. 

Thus, the cultural activities secretly going on in the barracks were transferred to public space. This transformation also led to a change in the performances themselves, which were now more structured, developed in line with the permissions and directions of the Nazis and their plans for propaganda. 

Despite being supported as part of the Nazi propaganda plan, the cultural activities in Terezin never ceased to be activities organized by the prisoners for the prisoners themselves. The program for February 1943 declared by the Freizeitgestaltung can help us understand the dynamism of the cultural life during the camp’s transformation into a model ghetto. The activities in the program can be classified as concerts, operas, and theatrical performances:

⠂Concerts: Twenty shows including; religious Jewish music, opera arias, Journey to Lands of Music (premiere), Raphael Schachter Hebrew Chorus (premiere).  [Rafael Schächter (b. 1905; probably died on the death march during the evacuation of Auschwitz in 1945), was a Jewish Czechoslovak composer, pianist, and conductor, organizer of cultural life in Terezín concentration camp.]

⠂Operas: In total ten performances including; The Bartered Bride [composed by Bedřich Smetana to a libretto by Karel Sabina during the period 1863 to 1866], Rigoletto [by Giuseppe Verdi with a libretto by Francesco Maria; premiered in 1851] (premiere), and The Marriage of Figaro [by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte; premiered in 1786] (premiere). 

⠂Theatrical Performances: Fifty performances in total including; The Grave (premiere) by Wolker, Youngsters Are Not Admitted (revue – premiere), a cabaret by Stolen Theatre, The Human Voice by [Jean] Cocteau [1889-1963], Cabaret with Skits by Thoren, songs from The Flower Bouquet by Erben, puppet theatre, and Women’s Dictatorship.

With a quick look at these plays which were performed on the small stages, it can easily be seen that the Jews in the ghetto had many national, cultural, linguistic and ideological differences. For instance, Jiri Wolker [1900-24], the Czech author of The Grave, was an avant-garde playwright popular among the communists. Another play, Youngsters Are Not Permitted, was written in German, with slightly obscene humorous elements in its songs and script. While The Bouquet, written by Karel Jaromir Erben [1811-70], was a classic from the Czech National Revival, The Dictatorship of Women [by Adolf Schütz, 1926-44] was a three-act comedy written in German in the early 1930s.

In the following months, there was an increase in the activities according to the list of Freizeitgestaltung: German theatre, Czech theatre, cabarets, opera and chorus performances, instrumental music, foreign language classes, various sports activities such as chess, football and table tennis were also included in the list. In this period, the Freizeitgestaltung had the power of saving the artists from the heavy labour that other prisoners were subjected to and appointing them to positions in art production. They even required that certain artists, though on rare occasions, should not be allowed to leave the ghetto. Among the responsibilities of the Freizeitgestaltung (Office of Leisure Time Activities), were the arrangement of stage areas for rehearsals and performances, the distribution of the tickets and the timely submission of the documents and texts associated with the works of art to the Nazis in order to deal with issues of censorship before artists started working on the scripts.

Meanwhile, performances in the barracks also continued to take place along with the official ones. One of the first prisoners sent to the ghetto, Ivan Klima [b. 1931], recounts below how theatre began in Terezin:  

“As a young spectator (I was 12 or 13 years old) I experienced several performances in the ghetto. I saw puppet shows and even operas: The Bartered Bride and Krasa’s Brundibar. To this day I recall the strange atmosphere that reigned during those performances: an atmosphere full of excitement, emotion, joy and tears. In Terezin, artists managed to stage several operas and plays. If my memory does not deceive me, the plays that were staged included The Bear by [Anton] Chekhov [1860-1904], The Marriage [b]y [Nikolai] Gogol [1809-52], and Camel through a Needle’s Eye by Frantisek Langer [1888-1965] . . . [.] In December 1941, my mother and I found ourselves in a living room with 30 women. I remember, how, sometimes in the evening, they sang songs. Sometimes songs by [Jiri, later George] Voskovec [1905-81] and [Jan] Werich [1905-80], sometimes folk songs or Jewish songs. As they sang, someone always stood guard in the hallway, to warn the others if an SS officer approached. They sang, even though it was difficult for the women to bring themselves to sing. They sang because it was a demonstration of free life in a hopelessly unfree environment. For the same reason, not long after, theatrical performance and even cabarets were born. (. . .) It was not possible for us in Terezin to lead the old lives we had left behind, to sustain our old habits and moral values. In Terezin, children would rather die voluntarily than be without their parents. In our new life, where the boundaries between the good and bad were blurred, a rotten potato, or a mouldy piece of bread was priceless.   

In addition to artists who painted and drew, there were many actors, directors, singers, musicians and writers in Terezin. Not all could continue to perform their art or create under such difficult circumstances. Some of them could stand the life in the ghetto only for a very short period of time and lost their lives soon after they arrived at the camp without being able to create anything. In addition, not all art that was produced in Terezin survived. It would not be wrong to state that many, or rather, the majority of the texts from that period vanished along with their writers. While reading the texts that reached our day, we should keep in mind the realities of Terezin. If it had only been known then that these texts were being kept, those who kept them would have been sent to Auschwitz or some other camp.”

As an actress who went on stage in Terezin, Nava Shan [1919-2001] recounts her days in the ghetto in her book [“To be an actress” – Chtěla jsem být herečkou in Czech; Li-heyot śaḥḳanit in Hebrew] as below:   

“I remember one of the first evenings in the camp. We were sitting in a crowded room on the muddy, bare floor. When people realized that I was an actress they requested that I “act something”. I gladly complied. I knew entire poems, parts of plays and tens of monologues by heart and that's how I started to circulate, in the evenings after work, between the barracks and blocks. During working hours, I only thought of what program to give in the evening, memorizing the texts in my head.”  

In the group of theatrical performances, I call the texts written in Czech and German, Terezin Plays. One of the texts in Czech is titled Radio Show, a composition of radio programs broadcasted on Prague 1 before the war. Written by Felix Prokes [1913-82], Vitezslav Horpatzky, Pavel Stransky [b. 1915. probably died in transit to Lodz Ghetto in 1941], and Kurt Egerer [1912-2000], the play has a fragmented structure resembling a radio broadcast, consisting of short comedies, folk songs, news, educational programs with themes such as morning recreations, agriculture, as well as folk songs, hymns, story time and sports. In addition to Radio Show, which is full of elements reminiscent of pre-war times, another play that draws attention with its time-space construct is a revue titled Prince Bettliegend, a satirical fairy tale written by Frantisek Kowanitz [1910-44] about a person skipping work as he was prescribed bed rest due to illness.  With many songs, the play’s fantastical construct of time and space does not match with the reality of the Terezin camp. The first scene takes place in a wizard’s workshop. The wizard inadvertently casts a spell on the prince, who, as a result, cannot move. The wizard’s assistants Hocus and Pocus decide to rescue the prince. Beginning as puppet theatre, the play ends with the Prince stating that he officially has the right to lie down as bedridden and so he does. Being bedridden is “a happy ending” for the play as well as for Terezin, where it is indeed a happy ending in the reality of a concentration camp to be able to lie down even in the narrow bunk beds crammed with people.

Written by Zdenek Elias [1920-2000] and Jiri Stein [1897-1945], The Smoke of Home tells the story of four men imprisoned during the Thirty Years[’] War [1618-48], which had started because of a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics and cost the lives of one third of the Czech population. Although relevant to the Terezin camp with its theme of war and religious difference aspect, the play was never staged in the ghetto. According to Holocaust survivors’ testimonials, the play was not written to be performed in Terezin, but life in the ghetto had been depicted in its text. The play, which was recited secretly as a closet drama in the barracks, is striking in the fact that it reflects life in Terezin through the reality of another old war.

Another play composed by the writers of Radio Show, namely Felix Prokes, Vitezlav Horpatzky, Pavel Weisskopf [1906-45], and Pavel Stransky is Laugh with Us, a cabaret which takes place in the post-war future as opposed to Radio Show’s pre-war times. In the play, a group of friends who return to Prague after their time in Terezin, look back on their lives in the camp from a safe distance. Life in the camp is treated lightly with a powerful sense of humour, rendering the play, as if it were, “a joyful resistance”.   

The most famous of the German plays written in Terezin is, From the Strauss Cabaret by Leo Strauss [1897-1944] and Myra Strauss-Gruhenberg. The play includes joyful, funny songs and sonnets. While a poem about the crowded conditions of the ghetto might include realistic lines such as “we are buried here alive”, the rest of the play does not present an immediate link to the daily life in the ghetto. Events take place in Vienna in the decade before the war. In an effort to recreate the atmosphere of the period, the play consists of sections titled Spa Music, Marriage Dialogue and Pierre Puts Everything in Order as well as songs about ghetto reality, such as Terezin Tango and Waltz in Terezin.

A play written in German is The Treasure, a puppet theatre penned by Arthur Englander. In the play, two children and a clown accompanying them travel to Africa in search of a treasure. On their journey, they live with an Arabic-speaking tribe and return home with a treasure that can save even the poorest who is at the verge of death because of hunger: Potato. The rest of the play presents differences because of two existing scripts. While in one the play ends with an announcement that the same story will continue in a second puppet play, in the other, the clown becomes the king and gives treats to everyone including the children and the elderly. Taking place in a fantastical time and space, the play ends happily in both versions.

Another play that includes fantastical elements is The Death of Orpheus, written by Georg Kafka [1921-44], who was a distant relative of Franz Kafka. Regarded highly by the residents of Terezin due to this relationship, during his days in the camp, Georg Kafka wrote many poems, stories, fairy tales, and scripts for the stage which were translated into German in the ghetto. Like the previous plays mentioned, The Death of Orpheus also contains references to mythological stories which do not match with the reality of Terezin. The scene with Orpheus and his mother is an example to such references. In his play, Kafka subtly asks questions that his audience, the prisoners in the camp, might be facing, such as, “how ready are we to sacrifice ourselves for our loved ones?”, or “is it possible to find peace in embracing death?”  

Written by Hans Hofer [1907-73], From the Hofer Cabaret presents ironic exaggerations, but at the same time accurate descriptions of the life conditions in the ghetto. Hofer’s writing is brave and powerful, addressing such issues as bribery and favouritism. The themes regarding the ghetto life are set in familiar melodies from Vienna, thus offering brief nostalgic moments to his German-speaking audience. The cabaret brings together in a humorous style the bureaucracy of the ghetto and the pre-war lives of the prisoners.

As with all works of art, the Terezin plays were also created out of an aesthetic concern. However, the plays are also inscribed with an existential meaning in the author’s will to survive, which best manifests itself in the time and space construct of the plays. Inclining towards the nostalgic, most of the plays take place in the pre-war period, but in a time in where it is possible to keep the memories of the life before camp alive, as well as holding on to the hope of a new life after the war. As recently discovered, the Terezin plays are textual evidences of the struggle for life that thousands of men and women in the camp gave by trying to hold onto both the past and the future through art.   

With respect for their memory. . .

[My analogy for these events—what image I had when I read this—is the northern lights.  On my trip to Alaska with my mother (see “The Last Frontier, Part 1: The Land Tour,” 26 March 2014), we saw the lights out the plane window on the flight from Seattle to Anchorage.  I wrote in my travelogue that it was "like something that really shouldn’t be happening."  And yet, it was.]

"Prisoners in Nazi concentration camps made music; now it’s being discovered and performed"

 by Jon Wertheim

 [The report below, from the CBS News magazine show 60 Minutes of 15 December 2019 (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/holocaust-prisoners-in-nazi-concentration-camps-made-music-now-being-discovered-and-performed-60-minutes-2019-12-15/), is a little over two years old.  Last week, however, I came across a reference to a phenomenon known as the Theresienstadt (or Terezin) Cabaret, a music-and-comedy entertainment put on by the Jewish prisoners at the Nazi concentration camp in Czechoslovakia during the Holocaust.  

[The story of the Theresienstadt Cabaret is remarkable in its own right, and I may post something on it in the future, but it reminded me of this also-remarkable tale, which reaches back to the Nazi Holocaust but brings it into the present for its conclusion.  The transcript below of Wertheim’s report is posted with a 28-minute-and-55-second video of the segment.] 

More than 6 million people, most of them Jews, died in the Holocaust. The music they wrote as a temporary escape, however, did not, thanks in part to the efforts of an Italian composer and pianist. 

The sign above the steel gates of Auschwitz reads “arbeit macht frei” – work sets you free. It was, of course, a chilling lie, an evil hoax. But there was one surprising source of temporary escape inside the gates: music. Composers and singers and musicians, both world-class and recreational, were among the imprisoned. And what’s not widely known is that under the bleakest conditions imaginable, they performed and wrote music. Lots of it.

More than 6 million people, most of them Jews, died in the Holocaust, but their music did not, thanks in part to the extraordinary work of Francesco Lotoro [b. 1964]. An Italian composer and pianist, Lotoro has spent 30 years recovering, performing, and in some cases, finishing pieces of work composed in captivity. Nearly 75 years after the camps were liberated, Francesco Lotoro is on a remarkable rescue mission, reviving music like this piece created by a young Jewish woman in a Nazi concentration camp in 1944.

Francesco Lotoro (Translation): The miracle is that all of this could have been destroyed, could have been lost.  And instead the miracle is that this music reaches us. Music is a phenomenon which wins. That’s the secret of the concentration camps.  No one can take it away. No one can imprison it. 

It seems unlikely, even impossible, that music could have been performed and composed at a place like this site of unspeakable evil, the most horrific mass murder in human history.

This is Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Nazi concentration camp in southern Poland. Set up by the Germans in 1940 as part of Hitler’s “Final Solution,” it became the largest center in the world for the extermination of Jews.   

More than a million men, women and children died here. For those who passed through this entrance, known as the “Gate of Death,” these tracks were a path to genocide and terror.

After they disembarked from cattle cars, most were sent directly to their deaths in the gas chambers.

The sounds of the camp included the screech of train brakes, haunting screams of families separated forever, the staccato orders barked by SS guards.

But also in the air: the sound of music, the language of the gods. This piece, titled “Fantasy” was written for oboe and strings, composed by a prisoner in Poland in 1942.

At Auschwitz, as at other camps, there were inmate orchestras, set up by the Nazis to play marches and entertain. There was also unofficial music, crafted in secret, a way of preserving some dignity where little otherwise existed.

During the Holocaust, an entire generation of talented musicians, composers and virtuosos perished. 75 years later, Francesco Lotoro is breathing life into their work.

Francesco Lotoro (Translation): In some cases, we are in front of masterpieces that could have changed the path of musical language in Europe if they had been written in a free world.

Francesco Lotoro’s work may culminate in stirring musical performances, but that’s just the last measure, so to speak. His rescue missions, largely self-financed, begin the old fashioned way, with lots of hard work, knocking on doors, and face-to-face meetings with survivors and their relatives.

Jon Wertheim: I have heard that you’ve searched attics and basements. I imagine sometimes families don’t even know the musical treasure they have.

Francesco Lotoro (Translation): There are children who have inherited all the paper material from their dad who survived the camp and stored it. When I recovered it, it was literally infested with paper worms.  So before taking it, a clean-up operation was required, a de-infestation.

Lotoro grew up and still lives in Barletta, an ancient town on the Adriatic Coast of southern Italy.  His modest home, which doubles as his office, is stuffed with tapes, audio cassettes, diaries and microfilm.

Aided by his wife, Grazia, who works at the local post office to support the family, Lotoro has collected and catalogued more than 8,000 pieces of music, including symphonies, operas, folk songs, and Gypsy tunes scribbled on everything from food wrapping to telegrams, even potato sacks.

The prisoner who composed this piece used the charcoal given to him as dysentery medicine and toilet paper to write an entire symphony which was later smuggled out in the camp laundry.

Jon Wertheim: He’s using his dysentery medication as a pen and he’s using toilet paper as paper.

Francesco Lotoro: Yes.

Jon Wertheim: And that’s how he writes a symphony.

Francesco Lotoro: Yes, when you lost freedom, toilet paper and coal can be freedom.

It’s a testament to resourcefulness, how far artists will go to create. It’s also a testament to the range of emotions that prisoners experienced. 

Jon Wertheim: What kind of music is this? This is 1944 in Buchenwald, in a camp.

Francesco Lotoro: This here a march.

Jon Wertheim: This is a march?

Francesco Lotoro: This surely to be scored for orchestra. (SINGS) It’s a march.

Lotoro isn’t just collecting this music, he’s arranging it and sometimes finishing these works.

Jon Wertheim: Is this completed work or is this only partial?

Francesco Lotoro: No, they’re only the melodies.

This tender composition was written by a Pole while he was in Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Lotoro says that if music like this isn’t performed, it’s as if it’s still imprisoned in the camps. It hasn’t been freed.

This wasn’t an obvious calling for an Italian who was raised Roman Catholic, but from age 15, Lotoro says, he felt the pull of another religion.

Jon Wertheim: You converted to Judaism [with his wife, in 2004]. You say you have a Jewish soul. Define what that means.

Francesco Lotoro (Translation): There was a rabbi who explained to me that when a person converts to Judaism, in reality he doesn’t convert. He goes back to being Jewish. Doing this research is possibly the most Jewish thing that I know.

Francesco Lotoro (Translation): We Jews have a word which expresses this concept. Mitzvah. It is not something that someone tells you you must do, you know as a Jew that you must do it.

Lotoro’s quest began in 1988 when he learned about the music created by prisoners in the Czech concentration camp Theresienstadt. The Nazis had set up the camp to fool the world into believing they were treating Jews humanely. Inmates were allowed to create and stage performances, some of which survive in this Nazi propaganda film. Lotoro was amazed by the level of musicianship and wondered what else was out there.

He reached out to Bret Werb, music curator at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington D.C. Werb says Francesco Lotoro is building on the legacy of others who have searched for concentration camp music, but Lotoro is taking it to the next level, making the scores performable. 

Jon Wertheim: Why did people in concentration camps turn to music?

Bret Werb: It helped people to cope. It helped people to escape. It gave people something to do. It allowed them to comment on the experiences that they were undergoing.

Jon Wertheim: Did music save lives during the Holocaust?

Bret Werb: There is no doubt that being a member of an orchestra increased your chances of survival

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch [b. 1925] is one of the last surviving members of the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz. She is now 94 years old. We met her at her home in London.  

Jon Wertheim: What had you heard about the camp before you arrived?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: We heard everything that was going on there only we didn’t – still tried not to believe it.  But by the time I arrived there, in fact, I knew it was a reality, gas chambers and . . . yeah . . .

Jon Wertheim: You came prepared for the worst?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: I came prepared for the worst, yes.

Her parents, German Jews, were taken away in 1942 and she never saw them again. She was just 18 when she arrived at the death camp a year later.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: We were put in some sort of block and waited all night, and the next morning there was a sort of welcome ceremony and there were lots of people sitting there doing the reception business. Like tattooing you, taking your hair off, et cetera. That’s all done by prisoners themselves

The numbers are still visible on her left arm.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: I was led to a girl also a prisoner and a sort of normal conversation took place. And then she asked me what was I doing before the war. And like an idiot, I don’t know, I said, “I used to play the cello.” She said, “That’s fantastic.” “You’ll be saved,” she said. I had no idea what she was talking about.

Jon Wertheim: And that’s how you heard there was an orchestra?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: Yeah.

Jon Wertheim: And this is your salvation?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: That was my salvation, yeah.

The conductor of the orchestra was virtuoso violinist [A]lma [R]ose [1906-44], niece of the famous Viennese composer, Gustav Mahler [1860-1911]. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch says Rose, a prisoner herself, had an iron discipline and tried to focus attention away from the profound misery of the camp.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: I remember that we were scared stiff of her. She was very much the boss. And she knew very well that if she did not succeed to make a reasonable orchestra there, we wouldn’t survive. So it was a tremendous responsibility this poor woman had.

The orchestra members all lived together in a wooden barracks like this – in Block 12 at Birkenau – known as the Music Block.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: We were based very near the crematoria. We could see everything that was going on.

Jon Wertheim: You’re practicing your orchestra and you can see everything going on?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: Yeah, I mean, once you are inside Auschwitz, you knew what was going on, you know.

Jon Wertheim: How do you play music pretending to ignore everything going on around you?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: You arrive in Auschwitz you are prepared to go to the gas chamber.  Somebody puts a cello in your hand, and you have a chance of life. Are you going to say “I’m sorry I don’t play here I play in Carnegie Hall?” I mean, people have funny ideas about what it’s like to arrive in a place where you know you’re going to be killed.

Jon Wertheim: What I hear you say is that your ability to play the cello saved your life.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: Yeah, simple as that.

The main function of the camp orchestras: playing marches for prisoners every day here at the main gate, a way, literally to set the tempo for a day of work. And a way to count the inmates.

Jon Wertheim: Right here is where the men’s orchestra played?

Francesco Lotoro: Yes there was like a procession and the orchestra played there.

The orchestras also played when new arrivals disembarked from trains at Birkenau, to give a sense of normalcy, tricking newcomers into thinking it was a hospitable place. This, when at the height of the killings, Nazis were murdering thousands of men, women and children each day. Evidence of the scope and scale of the atrocity still exists here: mountains of shoes, suitcases, glasses, shaving brushes, murder on an industrial scale.

Auschwitz archivists showed us some of the instruments that were taken out of the camp by orchestra members at the end of the war and later donated to the museum. This clarinet, a violin, and an accordion, as well as some of the music they played.

Jon Wertheim: This is the prisoner’s orchestra the concentration camp Auschwitz?

Archivist: Yes.

Jon Wertheim: And this is the inventory of instruments.

Archivist: Yes, what is inside.

The orchestras also gave concerts on Sundays for prisoners and for SS officers. 

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch remembers playing for the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele [1911-79], known as “the angel of death.” Mengele conducted medical experiments on prisoners. His notorious infirmary still stands just steps from the railroad tracks in Birkenau.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: What was interesting is that these people, these arch criminals, were not uneducated people.

Jon Wertheim: That this monstrous man could still appreciate Schumann.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: Yeah.

Jon Wertheim: How do you reconcile that?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: I don’t.

Francesco Lotoro took us to another location where the Auschwitz camp orchestra played for Nazi officers and their families. It’s just feet from the crematorium and within sight of the house of camp commandant Rudolf Hess [1894-1987].

Jon Wertheim: You were saying sometimes the smoke from the crematorium was so thick the musicians couldn’t even see the notes in front of them.

Francesco Lotoro: Yes, it happened.

Jon Wertheim: It happened.

Francesco Lotoro: And it’s tragic. Life and death were together.

Jon Wertheim: Life and death were intermingling.

Francesco Lotoro: And the point of connection of life and death is music. This is all we have about life in the camp.  Life disappeared. We have only music. For me, music is the life that remained.

Music may be the life that remained, music like this 1942 piece titled “Fantasy”, but it is the people behind the music that animate Francesco Lotoro’s long and ambitious project. Their compositions created at a time when fundamental values were in danger.

Today, as the number of Holocaust survivors dwindles, it’s more often their descendants Lotoro tracks down.

For 30 years, Lotoro has been on an all-consuming quest to collect music created by prisoners during the Holocaust. As he travels the world, mostly on his own dime, he is both a detective and an archaeologist, digging through the past to recover and discover actual artifacts. But maybe even more important, he meets with survivors and their family members to excavate the stories behind the music. We traveled to Nuremberg, Germany, to meet Waldemar Kropinski.  He is the son of Jozef Kropinski [1913-70], perhaps the most prolific and versatile composer in the entire camp constellation. 

Waldemar Kropinski says his father’s work was totally unknown before Francesco Lotoro brought it to light. 

Waldemar Kropinski (Translation): I thought it was something that was of no interest to anyone because my father was already dead and not even one camp composition of his was performed in Poland.

Jozef Kropinski, a Roman Catholic, was 26 when he was caught working for the Polish resistance and sent to Auschwitz, where he became first violinist in the men’s orchestra and started secretly composing, first for himself, and then for other prisoners. In 1942, he wrote this piece that he titled “Resignation”.  

Waldemar Kropinski (Translation): This is the list my father did seven months before his death.

Jon Wertheim: Oh this was all of his music.

Kropinski wrote hundreds of pieces of music during his four years of imprisonment, at Auschwitz and later at Buchenwald,  including tangos, waltzes, love songs, even an opera in two parts.

Still more astonishing, he composed most of them at night, by candlelight, in a tiny room the Nazis diabolically called a pathology lab, where during the day, bodies were dismembered.  Other prisoners had secured the space for Kropinski so he could have a quiet place to compose.

Jon Wertheim: This is where he worked? This is the pathology room where the cadavers mounted and he wrote music.

Waldemar Kropinski (Translation):  Yes.

Paper was in short supply, so Kropinski wrote music on items like this stolen Nazi requisition form . . .

Waldemar Kropinski (Translation): Because on the other side you had clean paper and my father could write notes . . .

Jon Wertheim: What’s the name of this piece?

Waldemar Kropinski (Translation): A set of Christmas songs for a string quartet.

That’s right, a few feet from piles of dead bodies, Jozef Kropinski wrote a suite of holiday songs. Waldemar says his father did it all to help raise the spirits of his fellow prisoners.

Waldemar Kropinski (Translation): His music was really touching hearts and very positive. It was important that the prisoners could hear something else in this time, something touching, so that they could go back in their memory to the old times, and feel encouraged.

In April 1945, as the Allies approached Buchenwald, the camp was evacuated and inmates were forced on a death march. Kropinski was able to smuggle out his violin and hundreds of pieces of music, some hidden in his violin case and others in a secret coat pocket, but only 117 survive today. On the march, he sacrificed the rest to build a fire for his fellow prisoners.

Jon Wertheim: You’re saying your father took paper on which he had written compositions and used that to start a fire to give people heat to save their lives?

Waldemar Kropinski (Translation): Yes, not only his life but the lives of others.

Francesco Lotoro says Kropinski, like so many other musicians, hasn’t gotten the recognition he deserves.

Francesco Lotoro (Translation): He was a man who obviously suffered a lot in the camps, but made himself available to others, creating music. He was a man who must be understood not only as a musician but as someone who created solidarity, created unison in the camps.

Jon Wertheim: When did you first come into contact with Francesco Lotoro?

Christoph Kulisiewicz: Francesco Lotoro called me and he told me that he heard about my father, that he heard about his mission about his music I couldn’t believe my ears so I immediately I wanted to meet him.

We wanted to see what one of Lotoro’s recovery missions looked like in practice, so we went along with him to the medieval city of Krakow, one of the oldest towns in southern Poland, to meet Christoph Kulisiewicz.

Christoph is the son of Aleksander Kulisiewicz [1918-82], a Pole imprisoned by the Gestapo for anti-fascist writings and deported to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in 1939. 

During more than five years of imprisonment, Kulisiewicz became something of a “camp troubadour,” helping inmates cope with their hunger and despair, and performing songs like this at secret gatherings. But he didn’t just compose and sing. He also used his extraordinary powers of recall, memorizing hundreds of songs by other prisoners, which he dictated to a nurse after the war, so they could be recorded. 

Christoph Kulisiewicz says his father considered the songs to be a form of oral history, not just giving hope to his fellow inmates but laying bare the truth of what was happening inside the camp.

Christoph Kulisiewicz: He always said, “I am living for those who died. They can’t sing, they can’t talk, but I can.”

Jon Wertheim: It sounds like music was a way to find just a slice of dignity, of humanity.

Christoph Kulisiewicz: Exactly.

Jon Wertheim: Amid all this horrible stuff.

Christoph Kulisiewicz: Exactly. That is what my father used to say, the slice of dignity. He said, “As long as you can sing and compose and you keep it in your mind, and the SS officer doesn’t know what you keep in your mind, you are free.”

Jon Wertheim: What was it like for you the first time you heard your father’s work sort of brought out of the shadows by Francesco Lotoro and performed? What was that like for you?

Christoph Kulisiewicz: It was amazing.  It was amazing because I never thought that it would come (to) life again and now it was like the voice of my father coming back as a real music again.  So he was, you know, living again for me.

Waldemar Kropinski can relate to the joy of finally hearing his father’s music performed.

Waldemar Kropinski (Translation): It was a very personal feeling. Even today, although I know these pieces, I go back and listen to them often, and every time I hear them, I cry.

To date, Francesco Lotoro has arranged and recorded 400 works composed in the camps, including those by Aleksander Kulisiewicz and Jozef Kropinski, and this piece by a Jewish musician in Theriesendtadt.

This spring, Lotoro will perform some of them at a concert to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camps.   

Francesco Lotoro: What happened in the camps is more than an artistic phenomena. We have to think of this music as a last testament. We have to perform this music like Beethoven, Mahler, Schumann. These musicians, for me, wanted only one desire: that this music can be performed.

Lotoro is building what he calls a “citadel” in his hometown of Barletta. Thanks to a grant from the Italian government, in February he plans to break ground at this abandoned distillery. A campus for the study of concentrationary music, it will include a library, a museum, a theater, and will house more than 10,000 items Lotoro has collected.

Francesco Lotoro (Translation): The real beneficiaries of this music aren’t us who are researching it, not this generation. The generation that will benefit from it, that will enjoy this music, is the generation of those who will come in 30 or 40 years. It’s an operation which is completely for the future.

He is continuing to raise funds from the public and hopes to complete the project in four years.

Jon Wertheim: You described what you’re doing as a mitzvah, this Jewish term for a good deed.  I think a lot of people would say what you’re doing goes well beyond a good deed.

Francesco Lotoro (Translation): I don’t know maybe I am doing a good thing. When I complete this research we’ll talk about it again. And then we will see if we truly did more than doing a good thing. For the time being I only see all of this as expensive, difficult, at times discouraging, but it has to be done until the end.

Like a musician who benefits from word of mouth, Francesco Lotoro and his remarkable work are starting to build a worldwide fan base.

Just last month alone, he performed in Toronto, Jerusalem and at a concert hall in Sao Paolo, Brazil. And that’s where we end our story tonight, as Francesco Lotoro brings to life the music he has rescued.

Produced by Katherine Davis.; Associate producer, Jennifer Dozor.; Broadcast associate, Cristina Gallotto.

[This story is accompanied by two 60 Minutes Overtime videos.  “Saved by music: a Holocaust survivor's story” (2:35) by Mabel Kabani is a continuation of the story of Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the cellist, and is posted with a transcript at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saved-by-music-a-holocaust-survivors-story-60-minutes-2019-12-15/. 

[“New life for music lost during the Holocaust” is a two-minute-and-35-second video-only post at https://www.cbsnews.com/video/italian-pianist-francesco-lotoro-saving-music-composed-in-captivity-during-holocaust-60-minutes-2019-12-11/.  Links to both sidebars are included in the main segment transcribed above.]