« Chi è Weiskopf?» La rappresentazione dell'identità ebraica in Ghetto sulla scena dei teatri delle due Germanie

Ever since the first German production of Joshua Sobol's play 'Ghetto' in 1984, the character Weiskopf had been played as a modern day Shylock. Why? Nowhere in the text of Sobol's play is Weiskopf actually described physically. Confronted with an unsympathetic Jewish male character who does business, however, the Shylock cliche emerges apparently unbidden. Questions of representation have to be asked separately about the text and the staging of a dramatic work. For that reason, contrasting two productions of 'Ghetto' in 1992, one by a West- and one by an East German theater, can provide information that goes far beyond differences in individual artistic visions.