11 - Jewish American Drama

Summary

One can hypothesize that the impressive volume of American Jewish plays created over the past half-century needs also to be seen as filling a vacuum created by the disappearance of the Yiddish theatrical scene. Israel Zangwill wrote two major Jewish plays, Children of the Ghetto and The Melting Pot, which were pioneering works in terms of Jewish drama. The theme of intermarriage introduced to the stage by Zangwill's The Melting Pot characterized numerous American plays. American anti-Semitism would emerge in the aftermath of World War II in Arthur Laurents's Home of the Brave, the first drama to explore the nexus of Jews, the military, and the psychologically debilitating effects of anti-Semitism. In the 1950s and the early 1960s the number of Jewish themed dramas declined. Some of the dramatists of the 1930s had migrated to Hollywood, while others were discouraged by the unwelcoming ambience of the Cold War and McCarthyism.