Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Julia Pascal, author, playwright, director and teacher in the St. Lawrence University Program in London

Jewish Mothers and Daughters

8 p.m., Eben Holden

Ms. Pascal's visit is made possible by the Rabbi Seymour Siegel Memorial Lecture Endowment at St. Lawrence University

Ms. Pascal is a professional director and playwright, with her own production company. Her work deals primarily with the lives of Jewish women, particularly in
relation to the Holocaust, but her background is extensive. In 1978 she became the first woman director at the National Theatre, directing an adaptation of Dorothy Parker’s Men Seldom Make Passes. Dissatisfied with the limited opportunities for women directors in the London theater at the time, she formed the Pascal Production Company in 1985, which focuses on Black, Jewish, and Irish themes, as well as work related to the lives of women. The company has offered productions at a wide range of venues in London, and has traveled to France, Poland, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium. Her 1982 teleplay for the BBC documentary Charlotte and Jane, about Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre, won a BAFTA award (British Academy of Film and Television Arts.)

In 1990, Ms. Pascal wrote, produced, and directed Theresa, based on the life of Theresa Steiner, a Viennese Jew, who was resident on the British Channel island of Guernsey when it was captured and occupied by the Germans in 1940. The accepted narrative of the occupation was that the Guernsey islanders co-operated with the Nazis, but refused collaboration. Steiner, however, was betrayed to the Nazis by Guernsey’s bailiff. Pascal, who read about the incident in a 1989 newspaper article, wanted to dramatize it. Her play was controversial, since it challenged the reigning myth of the noble Islanders, and was banned in Guernsey. The work led, however, to the writing of two more plays dealing with the impact of the Holocaust on the lives of European women, A Dead Woman on Holiday, and The Dybbuk. The three works were eventually presented as The Holocaust Trilogy at the New End Theater in London in 1995, and published by Oberon books in 2000. Ms. Pascal has since gone on to write and direct many other dramatic works, including The Yiddish Queen Lear in 1999, and Crossing Jerusalem in 2003. She is currently directing Brecht’s A Man’s A Man at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.

  Most recently, Ms. Pascal’s production company completed a film archive of interviews with close to 50 women Holocaust survivors and their daughters, entitled Jewish Mothers and Daughters. The filmed archive is on a set of 12 DVD discs, and has been deposited with the Jewish Museum, the British Library, the Imperial War Museum, the London Metropolitan Archives, the Women’s Library, and the London Jewish Cultural Center, which helped with production of the project.