Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T14:11:36.893Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

27 - Performance: Queerly Jewish/Jewishly Queer in the American Theater

from Part V - New Perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2015

Hana Wirth-Nesher
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University
Get access

Summary

Boys in the Band, as the breakthrough play in one of several genealogies one might trace through queer and Jewish performance, highlights a trope that has sustained surprising power. The 'Jew fairy' provides a useful starting point for examining the intersection of queer Jewish expression on various kinds of American stages. This chapter focuses on the fusing of moral seriousness and campiness in a variety of formal and nontraditional performance genres. Solo performance art has been an especially hospitable genre for the investigation of queer conundrums, as it is a form that often highlights the complicated construction of the self. Queer Yiddishkayt has found expression through what Jeffrey Shandler calls postvernacular Yiddish, a mode in which the symbolic fact of saying something in Yiddish is more important than the content of the utterance. Queer new Jews take to performance to reimagine Jewish rituals and festival observance to imbue them with new efficacy for confronting contemporary concerns.
Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×