Voices: Plays for Studying the Holocaust

Plays make active partners of those who see or read them. Students using scripts and related activities think, feel, and imagine as they make connections to dramatic and historic events. This anthology pulls together several complete scripts as well as segments of scripts about the Holocaust. These scripts provide unique opportunities for students studying the Holocaust to research, recount, reflect, and remember. This anthology is designed to be relevant as students pass from introductory through intermediate and advanced levels of Holocaust study. Appeal of the works to upper elementary, middle, and high school age students is predicated on issues and circumstances to which young people can relate. Each play is briefly introduced with information about the playwright. Noteworthy material relative to the play, such as awards garnered, a synopsis, or historical significance of content which facilitates placing the piece in context, is shared with the reader. Activities for teaching and learning about the Holocaust follow each script or excerpt. Appendixes provide resource information. Bringing together scripts, activities, and resources, this book has been compiled to offer intellectual and emotional experiences that students will long remember. The voices echoing dramatically from these scripted pages ring with both true and fictional stories of the Holocaust that we should not fail to hear.

Bringing together scripts, activities, and resources, this book has been compiled so as to offer intellectual and emotional experiences that students will long remember. The voices echoing dramatically from these scripted pages ring with both true and fictional stories of the Holocaust that we should not fail to hear.

VOYA

Every once in a while a book comes along that does it all: teaches, inspires, enlightens, and entertains. Rubin has crafted such a book in this important work that can be used as an interdisciplinary textbook, a guide to theatre production, a Holocaust reader, or a simple yet powerful springboard for discussion. Eight dramatic texts, some complete scripts and some segments, are arranged in three sections for beginning, intermediate, and advanced study. Information about the playwright and the work in production, as well as an essay on the play's relationship to the Holocaust, preface each play. The book's greatest contribution may be the teaching activities that follow each dramatic work. Unlike most activity lists, Rubin's suggestions are both thoughtprovoking and well designed, effectively complementing the scripts and the historical details they depict. Spanning a broad range of interests, her teaching activities involve art, creative writing, philosophical discussions, improvisations, historical analysis, and literary criticism. Each dramatic work offers a glimpse into a different aspect of the Holocaust, including ghetto life, Righteous Persons (nonJews who saved Jewish lives during this time period), children as victims of Nazi persecution, the conformity of German youth, the Nuremberg trials, the collapse of the Weimar Republic, survivor's memories, and Hitler as a child. A perfect addition to the curriculum for young adults, grades six through twelve, Voices is a highlyrecommended purchase for all public libraries and middle to senior high school media centers. Index. Biblio. Appendix. 1999, Scarecrow, Ages 11 to Adult, 314p. PLB $35. Reviewer: Dr. Stefani Koorey

Janet Rubin (Ph.D. Ohio State University) is a professor of communication and theatre at Saginaw Valley State University. She is a respected scholar of children's theatre and arts education. In connection with this work, Rubin was named a Research Associate of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Rubin is also the 1997-98 recipient of the Earl L. Warrick Award for Excellence in Research. This award is presented to an SVSU faculty member whose scholarly activity during an extended amount of time has been of the highest quality.