A List
3/24/08

'Jewish Mothers & Daughters' Filmmaker To Speak At St. Lawrence

CANTON - Author, playwright and director Julia Pascal, who has taught courses in St. Lawrence University's program of study in London, will give a talk at the University on Wednesday, April 2, at 7:30 p.m. in Herring-Cole, on "Jewish Mothers and Daughters." The event, made possible by the Rabbi Seymour Siegel Memorial Lecture Endowment, is part of the Contemporary Issues Forum at St. Lawrence and is open to the public, free of charge.

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. She recently 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 a set of 12 DVDs, 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. A set has also been purchased for the Owen D. Young Library at St. Lawrence.

Pascal 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. Her 1982 teleplay for the BBC documentary Charlotte and Jane, about Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre, won a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award.

In 1990, 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, as well as two other 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. 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 Bertolt Brecht's A Man's A Man at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Rabbi Siegel was a noted Conservative Jewish author and scholar. His family donated his papers to St. Lawrence University's Owen D. Young Library and created an endowment for an annual lecture on campus in his memory.

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