Events Calendar

Next Year in Jerusalem: Artists Respond to Testimony from the Holocaust

Admission is free.
Reception to follow.

Is it true that there can be, as philosopher Theodor Adorno declared, “no poetry after Auschwitz”? Or can artists hold up a lens to catastrophic experience in a way that invites us to move through the heartbreak of history into a new realm in which we can help transform the present? We will consider these questions during a powerful evening of performance and conversation that will explore how artists respond to unimaginable horrors. The event will feature a performance of Next Year in Jerusalem, a collaboration of two USC faculty artists, writer-performer Stacie Chaiken (Theatre) and playwright-dramaturg Brighde Mullins (Master of Professional Writing). Chaiken and Mullins were invited to create the piece based on materials from the USC Libraries’ newly acquired Holocaust-research collection, which includes journals, photographs and firsthand testimonies from survivors and witnesses of the World War II genocide. After the performance, an initial response will be offered by novelist and Holocaust scholar R. Clifton Spargo, followed by a panel discussion about the use of testimony and trauma for creative expression. Panelists will include Chaiken, Mullins and Spargo along with USC faculty members Brent Blair (Theatre), Wolf Gruner (Jewish Studies and History) and Gabor Kalman (Cinematic Arts), as well as Stephen Smith of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute.

Organized by Wolf Gruner (Jewish Studies and History) and Lynn Sipe (USC Libraries).

For further information on this event:
visionsandvoices@usc.edu

Location: The Ray Stark Family Theatre, School of Cinematic Arts 108

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Daria Yudacufski